-RuralIndiaOnline.org Imagine a democratic protest where a million farmers, labourers and others march to the capital and compel discussion of the exploding crisis of the countryside in a special three-week session of Parliament India’s agrarian crisis has gone beyond the agrarian. It’s a crisis of society. Maybe even a civilizational crisis, with perhaps the largest body of small farmers and labourers on earth fighting to save their livelihoods. The agrarian crisis is no...

-The Hindu Conflicts, climate change are main hurdles in meeting development goals The number of hungry people in the world has risen for the first time in more than a decade, according to a United Nations report released on Wednesday. There are now approximately 38 million more undernourished people in the world, rising from 777 million in 2015 to 815 million in 2016, the year for which the latest statistics are available. According to...

-The Telegraph State ignoring ground realities of malnutrition, busy trying to prove every victim was ailing, says Drèze Ranchi: Right to Food Campaign activists claim the Jharkhand government was doing precious little to arrest the circumstances that force people to starve and die, but was continuing to "shamelessly marshal" all resources to prove after every starvation death that it was because of illness and not hunger. According to noted economist and activist, Jean...

-TheWire.in A government social audit conducted in April has found that 96.9% of people in Nagri block want to go back to the old public distribution system rather than continue with the Aadhaar-link benefit transfers. New Delhi: Even though a Jharkhand government social audit has confirmed widespread dissatisfaction with the Aadhaar-linked direct benefit transfer (DBT) pilot experiment in the public distribution system (PDS) in Nagri block, the project continues as before. The pilot...

  The outcome of a social audit (conducted in April this year) related to the pilot cash transfer programme in the public distribution system (PDS) in Nagri block (Ranchi district) has confirmed that most beneficiaries want back the normal ration system that existed previously. Yet the Jharkhand state government continues with the DBT-based PDS in Nagri block, instead of returning back to the older system, says a press release by the...