The National Advisory Council (NAC), headed by Sonia Gandhi, on Saturday recommended to the government to grant differential legal entitlement of foodgrains to nearly 800 million people through a reformed PDS network from the next financial year. The NAC also decided to set aside the BPL criteria and suggested two broad categories — priority and general — eligible for legal foodgrain entitlement under the proposed food security law. As per the recommendations,...

As POSCO hits green roadblocks, the mega project seems doomed THE ODISHA government is trying hard not to sound defensive, after the Meena Gupta Committee report pulled it up for violating the local people’s forest rights while giving the nod to POSCO for setting up its proposed $12 billion steel plant. Earlier, a joint committee of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) had reached the same conclusion, and reported several...

Businesses and policy-makers need to recognize the tremendous economic value of ecosystems, as well as the social and economic costs of losing such natural resources as forests, freshwater, soils and coral reefs, a new United Nations report released today said. The report by the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), a body hosted by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), seeks to galvanize the world to recognize the economic consequences of failing...

It has not included the clause on price regulation of seeds The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved additional amendments to the Seeds Bill. 2004. The amendments however did not include the clause on price regulation of seeds that is being demanded by members of Parliament who have moved amendments to the Bill that may be introduced in this session. They wanted a regulatory mechanism on pricing of seeds so that seeds were available...

One billion people worldwide still live in extreme poverty Agricultural growth remains central to poverty reduction, as one billion people worldwide continue living in extreme poverty, many of them in rural areas, a World Bank Group on agriculture, the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), said in a report released on Tuesday. Drawing on the World Bank Group's (WBG) experience in supporting agricultural growth in the past decade, the report — Growth and Productivity...