-TheWire.in India’s midday meal scheme (MDMS) reaches more than 11 crore children across 12 lakh government schools around the country. Based on a Supreme Court order in 2001, states introduced a cooked meal in schools – replacing the earlier system of monthly “dry rations”. Despite many achievements, the scheme tends to make headlines for the wrong reasons. A recent audit report by the CAG found a number of implementation gaps, including...
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65 die of starvation, future bleak for lakhs of north Bengal tea workers
-DNA The situation of hunger has now resulted in several starvation deaths. In the last six months, 65 workers have died, with 21 dead in Birpara tea estate, 16 in Hantapara, 15 in Dhumchipara, 7 in Gargandya and 6 in Nageswari. At about 3 pm on September 15 early this year, Rajman Lohar passed away in his modest home in Hantapara. A permanent worker at the Hantapara Tea Estate, owned by the...
More »Whitefly lesson -Jitendra
-Down to Earth A few villages in Haryana successfully grow cotton amid widespread destruction of the crop by whitefly in the region LOOK HERE, the red pest you see is Chrysopa,” says an excited Manisha, while navigating through her cotton field in Haryana’s Nidana village. “A single Chrysopa, a carnivorous pest, eats around 125-150 whiteflies a day,” says the 24-year-old. Further ahead in her 0.8-hectare cotton plantation, she picks another plant leaf...
More »Incentivize pulses production to check spiralling prices
The low rate of inflation of 3.88 percent in Consumer Food Price Index during September, 2015 actually hides the high prices at which various pulses (dal) are available in kirana / retail shops across India. In terms of Consumer Price Index (combined), monthly rate of inflation in pulses and products during September 2015 (over September last year) stood at 29.76 percent as compared to the overall monthly retail inflation of...
More »Emphasis on cereals prime cause of high pulse prices -Rajeev Deshpande & Dipak Kumar Dash
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The current spike in pulse prices could have been anticipated, but India's cereal-centric food security policies emphasize rice and wheat while dis-incentivizing the production of pulses despite clear trends that show a declining preference for cereals. Even though India's dependency on imported pulses grew as imports rose from 2.7 million tonnes in 2010-11 to over four million tonnes this year, minimum support price-driven procurement and the...
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