Wrong policies of the government have been responsible for the prevalent food insecurity in the country, alleged activists. They also said the proposed National Food Security Act ignores the root causes of hunger and it deliberately leaves untouched the structural roots of the malnutrition crisis. Releasing a report on India’s food security scenario and the reasons behind it on Tuesday activist Vandana Shiva said following Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings on self-reliance together...

The recent spike in world food prices has further widened the gap between the developed and the developing economies. While, over 70 per cent of the world's population resides in poor countries, it has access to less than 40 per cent of the world's resources such as water, irrigated land, power, etc. This is a result of inconsistent economic progress (post-colonialisation birth pangs), rampant population growth and distractions such as...

In April, India’s Planning Commission accepted recommendations put forth by the so-called Tendulkar Committee on a new poverty headcount for the country. Constituted by the Planning Commission under economist Suresh D Tendulkar, the committee, after four years and a new methodology, arrived at a new figure for the number of Indians living below the poverty line: 37.2 percent, ten points higher than the previous official figure. With the government’s subsequent...

The Union budget estimates the nominal rate of growth for the Indian economy to be 12.5 per cent during the current fiscal. While it is impossible to figure out the manner in which this number was arrived at, the government has predicted further that the inflation-adjusted real growth rate for the same year will be eight per cent. Simple arithmetic requires that the difference between the nominal and real growth...

Pointing out that a disconnect exists between mass media and mass reality in India today, P. Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor of TheHindu, said the media had lost its sense of priorities and was out of touch with the problems of a vast section of the population of the country. He was delivering the Silver Jubilee Lecture on “Mass media: But where are the masses?” at the Indira Gandhi National Open University...