-The Economic Times None of the standard explanations quite explain the rise in food prices India has seen: pronounced since 2006 and alarming after 2010. Drought and poor rains? The country has seen good aggregate rainfall in most of those years. Spike in global prices? Those were high in 2007-08, not now. Fragmented value chains that allow middlemen to grab large margins? The value chain has always been fragmented. Growth has slowed...

-The Tribune The UPA's flagship programme MGNREGS changed the employment scene for the rural poor. While 100-day job guarantee was a novel step, loopholes and poor implementation rendered it a liability. The Modi govt hopes to gradually reinvent the scheme, if not entirely scrap it. Midway through the Congress-led UPA's second tenure - believed to be largely the courtesy of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) -...

-The Tribune The community has to pay the cost of environmental degradation if sustainable agricultural practices are not followed. Food can also be produced by in-built provisions for ecological services. For this, sustainability issues have to be addressed with policy support. An ecosystem is a dynamic, complex, functional unit of diverse living organisms, physical environment and humans are its integral part. The wellbeing of mankind depends upon food, water, fibre, medicine, flood...

-PTI Says some of the immediate measures are implementing APMC Act in all states Stating agriculture has the potential to take India's growth to 8% and create millions of jobs in rural areas, Assocham has suggested a slew of measures to the Government in this regard. It has suggested the NDA government to adopt an enabling policy environment, modern technology and boost supply-chain efficiency to address food inflation, encourage investment-led growth and ensure...

-The New Indian Express   Back in 1989, the area near Chennakothapalli village of Anantapur (the second driest area in India) in Andhra Pradesh was a wasteland. Till C K Ganguly (Bablu) and Mary Vattamattam chanced upon it in 1991 and saw its immense potential to blossom into a green paradise. The couple, along with friend John D'Souza, then bought 32 acres of this barren land. Inspired by Japanese author Masanobu Fufuoka's seminal...