The Kolkata Group is an independent initiative inspired and chaired by Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen. Once a year, it brings together participants drawn from various fields to explore the many inter-connections between inequality, deprivation, human development, and democracy. Its special focus has been on examining ways of advancing people’s health and education. The organisations supporting the Kolkata Group are UNICEF India, Professor Sen’s Pratichi Trust, and the Harvard-based Global...

Smallholders and rural producers have a vital role to play in overcoming global hunger and poverty, and new and varied partnerships are needed, with particular emphasis on the interests of women, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today. “With more than 1 billion people now suffering from hunger, the highest number in human history, there is simply no time to lose,” he told the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized...

If we can have a nuclear submarine programme, a space missile programme, cricket sponsorship programme by individuals like Sharukh Khan, why can’t we have a programme to save rotting paddy lying across the country,” says Dr MS Swaminathan highlighting the parody that India’s is currently facing. In Ludhiana to address the convocation of Punjab Agriculture University the scientist and Member of Parliament speaks to ET highlighting that the future belongs...

Bihar has been in the news recently for recording an average growth rate of 11.3 per cent for the period between 2004 and 2009. Much has been written about the quality of governance and the improved state of roads. This is indeed commendable, and no mean achievement, for a State that had virtually become a “development outcast”. I was pleasantly surprised to note on a recent trip to Bihar the...

The poverty line that the Tendulkar Committee proposes depends on reduced calorie consumption, and fails to provide for reasonable household expenditures on schooling and health.  For some years, the Government of India has been under pressure to change the norms for calculating the official poverty line. Current norms have resulted in gross and manifest underestimation of the numbers of the poor, and, consequently, in the exclusion of hundreds of millions...