-Down to Earth India ranked 19th among 45 developing countries assessed by UK-based organisation India has made quite some progress in countering hunger and under-nutrition in the past two years but Nepal and Bangladesh have done better and have shown serious commitment through political will, says the Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI) report, 2013. The annual HANCI report, prepared by non-profit Institute of Development Studies and International Food Policy Research Institute funded...

-Down to Earth As June ends, the monsoon, it turns out, is deficient by 40 per cent. Despite the forecast of its revival in July, it is a concern for India's rainfed areas that account for significant foodgrain production and also host the largest number of farmers in the country. More than 100 districts are officially "chronic drought-affected" areas. Why have we not been able to drought-proof them? On June 28 Prime...

-The Business Standard     Foreign direct investment in the NGO sector is, in fact, no different from the cross-holdings and the FDI web of the corporate world  ClimateWorks, one of the two international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) recently restricted by the National Democratic Alliance government from funding Greenpeace India Society in India, also funds another NGO, Global International, which, till recently, was headed in India by Union Environment and Forests minister Prakash Javadekar. When...

-The Indian Express   The Gujarat model continues to generate more heat than light. This is in response to Professor Yoginder K. Alagh's article, ‘Posture-nomics' (IE, May 7), wherein he says, "Getting back to agriculture, the 10 per cent growth rate figure was the result of a paid-for study commissioned by the government of Gujarat and conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute, to which [Ashok] Gulati was affiliated. The finding was...

-The Indian Express   Debate on the Gujarat model is more about stated positions, less about reality. Having done economic modelling all my life, as a student at the University of Pennsylvania, which boasted of the Wharton model and Lawrence Klein, and later, in the days when planning still mattered, while heading the modelling division of the Planning Commission, I find it bewildering that Gujarat's substantial real achievements and equally real problems are...