-Down to Earth Highest rice acreage in six years, more farmers in farms, a bounty monsoon and an expected bumper harvest don't enthuse farmers as their earning dips It is a piece of news that everybody would love to cheer about, except those who made this possible. The current kharif season is exceptional. In comparison to last year, over eight million more hectares of farms are under cultivation this season. There are more...
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Right to Food Campaign urges the Hon’ble Minister for Women & Child Development to restart ICDS for children and pregnant and lactating women
-Press release by Right to Food Campaign, dated August 6th, 2020 The Right to Food Campaign has sent a memorandum to the Hon'ble Minister of Women and Child Development Ms. Smriti Zubin Irani demanding to restart the hot cooked meal and Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme. It may be noted that most services for women and children have been shut down since March this year i.e. since the time when...
More »Policymakers still talk of ‘food security’, it’s time to plan for ‘nutritional self-reliance’ -Ajay Vir Jakhar
-The Indian Express Farmers will need to be supported in perpetuity; they can never become atmanirbhar. The question is how best to support farmers such that India may become nutrition self-reliant Imagine, while constructing a multi-storey building the contractors discover the building foundation has begun to sink. It is scary, but wait. Now, imagine that even though the contractors know this, they simply decide to continue work rather than alter the plans....
More »Can raising the approved labour budget from 280.76 crore person-days to 306.6 crore person-days help the unskilled returnee migrants who prefer MGNREGA to Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan?
Although social activists and concerned economists demanded at least Rs. 1 lakh crore to be earmarked in favour of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Finance Minister in her budget speech on 1st February allocated only Rs.61,500 crore to it for the financial year 2020-21. As compared to the fund spent on MGNREGA in 2019-20 (i.e. revised estimate of Rs.71,001.81 crore), the amount set aside for the...
More »75% emerging infectious diseases zoonotic: UN Report -Rajeshwari Sinha
-Down to Earth Document emphasises on importance of a ‘One-Health’ approach to manage and prevent zoonotic disease outbreaks and pandemics About 60 per cent of known infectious diseases in humans and 75 per cent of all emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, according to a new report published recently by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Preventing the Next Pandemic:Zoonotic diseases and how to break the chain...
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