Is the majority of India veg or non-veg? Well, contrary to impression, the land of Gandhi and Buddha is predominantly non-veg. It may well have been majority vegetarian country at some point of time but the new trend is that more and more people are taking to non-vegetarian diets. A new policy paper, “Veg or Non-Veg? India at the Crossroads,” published by Brighter Green, a New York-based public policy action...
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Poor labourers pledged Rs 100, get Re 1 for day's work under govt's employment guarantee scheme by Nitin Sethi
Poor workers are being paid wages as low as Rs 1-10 for a hard day's labour in states like Rajasthan and Karnataka under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme which promises a real wage of Rs 100 per day. Documents with TOI show that many desperate, poor labourers across the country are being cheated of their hard earned money and the much publicized guaranteed daily wage of Rs 100...
More »FCI pays 30% less, forces distress sale by Sidhartha & Surojit Gupta
Farmers across the country are entitled to get Rs 1,080 a quintal (100kg) asminimum support price for paddy. But surprisingly, a team from the Centre that visited Bihar and Uttar Pradesh last week found that theFood Corporation of India (FCI) was paying nearly 30% less. With little procurement taking place in these states, farmers have been left with no option but to go for distress sale. The result: In procurement centres...
More »Eye on shorter list, Bengal for fresh BPL survey by Pranesh Sarkar
The cash-strapped Bengal government has persuaded the Centre to conduct a fresh survey of the below poverty line (BPL) population in the state. Panchayat and rural development minister Subrata Mukherjee had tossed up the proposal at a meeting with his central counterpart Jairam Ramesh at Budge Budge yesterday. “Poverty estimates by the Centre and the state are markedly different…. So we decided to run a check on whether the Left Front government...
More »Cooperatives central to fighting hunger, stresses UN agency
-The United Nations Cooperatives and producer organizations will be increasingly important in efforts to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today. “FAO needs strong cooperatives and producer organizations as key partners in the effort to eliminate hunger for some 925 million people, and to respond to the many challenges that face our world today,” said Director-General José Graziano da Silva. He told...
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