Managing our soil and water resources in a sustainable and equitable manner needs a new political vision, which can be expressed through the proposed Land Acquisition Bill and the recently formed Global Soil Partnership. On the basis of a proposal I had made three years ago, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) launched a Global Soil Partnership for Food Security and Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation at a multi-stakeholder conference, held...

Public health experts blame it on government complacency THE World Health Organization has raised alarm over leprosy spreading across India. With the disease infecting about 120,000 people every year, the country is now the biggest contributor to the global leprosy burden, the UN body said in a press release. The Union health ministry had declared the disease, which causes lesions on the skin and attacks nerves in the hands and feet, often...

-The Hindu Business Line   The uncertainty over adopting agricultural biotechnology is in no one's interest, given the high food inflation and dependence on imports. With food inflation climbing once again above 10 per cent, it has become even more urgent for the government to provide a a clear mandate in terms of policy support, the technology options and requisite investment for domestic agriculture. Output growth, especially of proteins, has been decisively trailing...

While Indian psychiatrists have rejected a World Health Organisation (WHO) study portraying India as the depression capital of the world, they say it has indirectly drawn Attention to an acute shortage of trained personnel and facilities to deal with mental illness. "Declaring India as having the highest rate of major depression in the world is an aberration in interpretation," Dr. Roy Abraham Kallivayalil, secretary-general of the World Association of Social Psychiatry,...

The Centre is set to make it compulsory for 4% of its annual purchases to be made from units run by dalits and tribals in what will be its strongest bait for classes that hold the key to political battles at the Centre and states. A rough estimate of the proposed spending comes to Rs 25,000 crore. Preferential procurement has been an early poll promise of UPA and its delivery...