Panchayat elections in Uttar Pradesh have thrown up many curious phenomena. Everyone involved with the panchayat elections in Uttar Pradesh seems to love it. Sons, brothers, sons-in-law of MLAs contesting for seats at the village, tehsil or district levels in vast numbers are happy because the vidhayak mahoday is campaigning on their behalf, making full use of the party machinery. Wives and daughters-in-law from ‘influential families' are delighted because their family's...
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Prabhat Patnaik, Professor at CESP, Jawaharlal Nehru University and vice-chairman of the Planning Board of Kerala interviewed by R Krishna
Last month, leaders from 185 countries met in New York to take stock of progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — which include, among other things, eradicating poverty and hunger, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health — that were set in 2000 by the United Nations. The aim was to achieve these goals by 2015. But 10 years down the line, the world is way behind targets in achieving...
More »Number of hungry people in the world “unacceptably high” by Gargi Parsai
Global hunger is rising rapidly due to sharp spikes in food commodity prices. The combination of global food crisis and economic recession pushed the number of hungry people beyond the one billion mark, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation's Director-General Jacques Diouf told the 36th session of the Inter-governmental Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in Rome on Wednesday. The session has been timed with the World Food Day on Saturday. Agricultural scientist...
More »What India’s growth story conceals by Abhijit Patnaik
India’s performance at the Commonwealth Games in 2010 has been its best so far – second on the medals list.However, another kind of ‘competition’ ranked 84 countries in accordance with achievements in a different field this week. India was a lowly 67th. The field was hunger, measured by combining the proportion of people undernourished, the proportion of underweight children and the child mortality rate. The Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2010 –...
More »Losing their nerve? by Jean Dreze
Five years ago, when the proposed National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was a subject of fierce controversy, Bunker Roy compared the attitude of the government to that of a dog who crosses a road half-way, can’t decide whether to go forward or backward, and gets run over. This enlightening image applies again today, in the context of the proposed National Food Security Act (NFSA). The National Advisory Council (NAC) discussed...
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