The G8 countries have promised to increase the spending on agricultural development by $20 billion over the next three years. The amount is woefully less than the $44 billion that will be needed each year to end malnutrition.  At the world leaders’ meeting in Copenhagen, it is imperative that governments pledge to adopt up-to-date technologies to boost food production as well as outweigh the negative impacts of climate change. A...

In a year of sparse rains and spiralling food prices, with hundreds of districts being officially declared as drought-hit, a rally by activists in the capital demands a Food Entitlements Act.  Perhaps the most vocal demands at the rally were those aimed at a complete revamp of the Public Distribution System (PDS), starting with universal — instead of targeted — coverage. Over 5,000 grassroots activists, agricultural workers, farmers, lawyers, doctors and...

HAS GREEN REVOLUTION FAILED INDIA'S POOR? Green Revolution Vs Rain-fed Farming OVERVIEW: Of late India’s fabled Green Revolution has come under severe attack. Many development thinkers believe that it has unfairly skewed India’s agriculture policy in favour of the farmers whose land is already or potentially covered under irrigation. The basic criticism is that the Green Revolution has been largely irrelevant for India’s 60 per cent cultivable land which is un-irrigated. These...

Whenever I went missing as a child, my mother would come looking for me in the pata, Lalitabai Meshram said, laughing out loud. “My friends and I would play in the tangled vines for hours, making dolls of corn husk and hair, eating groundnuts, beans and waluk melon. Sometimes I would fall asleep there,” recalled Meshram, now 50-plus. Last year, after about four decades, she carved out a pata from...

More Indians go to bed hungry today than they did on the eve of Independence 62 years ago So, more Indians go to bed hungry today than they did on the eve of Independence sixty two years ago. The per capita calorie intake, experts say, has dropped to what it was at the end of World War II. On top of it now, over 25 per cent of the country...