-PTI Global food prices are expected to be higher in the 2011-20 period compared with the previous decade and this could have a “devastating” impact on the poor in developing countries, an OECD-FAO report has said. “Higher food prices and volatility in commodity markets are here to stay,” Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in a joint report released today. The report ‘OECD-FAO Agriculture...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Total Matching Records found : 2012
With 1.2 billion people, India seeks a good hangman by Jim Yardley and Hari Kumar
-The New York Times India has 1.2 billion people, among them bankers, gurus, rag pickers, billionaires, snake charmers, software engineers, lentil farmers, rickshaw drivers, Maoist rebels, Bollywood movie stars and Vedic scholars, to name a few. Humanity runneth over. Except in one profession: India is searching for a hangman. Usually, India would not need one, given the rarity of executions. The last was in 2004. But in May, India's president unexpectedly rejected...
More »The coming crisis for rain-dependent India by M Rajshekhar
It's that time of the year when Kishore Lal Singh's eyes almost involuntarily scan the skies. The monsoons are coming. In the months ahead, for this Bhil farmer growing cotton, maize and soya south of the Malwa plateau in Madhya Pradesh, life will again hang on a knife's edge. If it rains well, his two bighas (about four basketball courts) of cotton will yield 1,000 kg. If not, he will...
More »In India's grain bowl, farms face threat from MNREGS
-Reuters Sitting at the edge of fields in the heart of India's grain bowl, Gurdayal Singh Malik shakes his head in resignation about the lack of workers needed for his 60-acre farm, blaming the government's flagship welfare program, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), for the shortage. Ever since the start of the program, which guarantees 100 days of work a year for rural households, the flow of...
More »Spurt in farmer suicides in Bundelkhand by Swati Mathur
Everything is in short supply here, especially hope. There was a flicker of it, though, when on April 30 Prime Minister Manmohan Singhcame here with Rahul Gandhi. Maybe the people were expecting a miracle, an end to the misery created by season after season of bad crops and the resultant rising debt. Their hope proved to be short-lived. Since then, nine farmers have killed themselves in Banda district alone, the...
More »
