At a time when economic wisdom is seen as lying in allowing unrestrained play of economic power and cutting social sector spending, here is a report emphasising the economic sense in addressing hunger, especially child malnutrition. It also brings out the positive impact of employment guarantee scheme, which has been a thrust area of the UPA government but has seen a cut in allocation in Budget proposals for 2012-13. The report...

In an interview with Mint in February, Jairam Ramesh, minister of rural development, was asked whether the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) would be rolled back in the upcoming budget as part of a plan to reduce the fiscal deficit. “How can we roll back a demand-driven programme?” Ramesh had replied. But that is precisely what seems to have happened. On Friday, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee announced a...

-Bloomberg   World food prices will drop this year as increase in unemployment in developing and developed countries slows growth in demand, the United Nations said.   “We have started to see a decline in food prices,” Jose Graziano da Silva, director general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, said at a conference in Hanoi on Thursday. World economic expansion will slow to 3.3% this year from 3.8% in 2011, according to the International...

National AIDS Control Programme urged to move beyond medicine-centric approach The government programmes for children suffering from HIV/AIDS should move from medicine-centric approach to include nutrition and preventive care, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has recommended. In its recently released report ‘Rights and entitlements of children affected and infected by HIV/AIDS 2010-11’, the organisation also advocated provisions for issuing BPL cards to children who have lost their...

The common man, whose concerns were at the heart of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance’s two successful election campaigns, doesn’t seem to be the focus of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s budget. Experts and political analysts say the aam admi doesn’t appear to be the dominant concern anymore, prompting speculation about Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi’s role. She has thus far been setting the UPA’s social agenda through the National Advisory Council...