The Director-General of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, Dr. Jacques Diouf, announced at the Inter-Governmental Committee on World Food Security (CFS) that the combination of global food crisis and economic recession had taken the number of people affected across the world to over one billion. He described the number as “unacceptably high,” higher than in 1996 when the heads of states and governments committed themselves to reducing hunger by...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Total Matching Records found : 1618
More about Dalit hopes and despair by S Viswanathan
Last week's column, “The plight of Dalits and the News Media” (October 25, 2010), has generated a lively and interesting response from several readers. The column was about the prioritisation of the tasks before the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes (NCSC) by its new Chairman, P.L. Punia (not P.J. Punia as erroneously mentioned in the column.) The concern of most who wrote was over the failure of successive governments...
More »Cut-Rate Democracy by Pranjoy Guha Thakurta
Two years ago, when I told some of my more cynical fellow-tribals from the journalistic fraternity that I was about to complete a textbook on media ethics, they smirked. Media ethics? That’s an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, they said glibly. What became apparent to me then was that the image of the journalist in India has taken quite a battering. There are many among the aam admi who still...
More »No newspapers in Manipur after militants' threat
Newspapers in Manipur did not hit the stands on Monday as media houses took the decision to not bring out any issues following a threat by a militant group. While a militant outfit wanted a certain statement to be published verbatim in the papers, its rival faction threatened them with dire consequences if the statement was published, the spokesman said. On several occasions earlier, papers failed to hit the stands for similar...
More »Vaccine probe exposes flawed appreciation by S Viswanathan
The report of the Javid Chowdhury Committee facilitated the resumption, in February 2010, of vaccine production in the three public sector units, one in Himachal Pradesh and the other two in Tamil Nadu. Javid Chowdhury, a former Health Secretary of the Government of India, recommended that the suspension of their licenses for manufacturing vaccines in 2008 should be revoked in the public interest and on the strength of the compliance...
More »
