EVEN as the fate of Bt brinjal hangs in balance, the parliamentary standing committee attached to the agriculture ministry has started examining the pros and cons of introducing genetically-modified food in India, with a panel of experts coming out in favour of setting up a regulatory mechanism to monitor their implications. At the first meeting of the parliamentary panel on the sensitive subject here this afternoon, three experts, including Delhi...

The latest recommendation by the National Advisory Council on the National Food Security Act represents a significant shift in the debate on food security in the country. The discussions in the NAC suggest that the debate has largely been around the universalisation of the Public Distribution System. There also seems to have been other decisions taken by the NAC, especially on the right to food of vulnerable people and children’s right...

When flames from an open cooking fire raced through Fida Hussein's shack in northern India, it was a disaster for him and his poverty-stricken family. "We have nothing," said Hussein as he stood in the ruins of his hut through which the sky could be seen between the burnt roof timbers in a remote corner of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state. India's number of millionaires grew by 51 percent...

2010 will mark 20 years of UNDP’s Human Development Reports (HDRs). Consequently, UNDP wants to do something new. There cannot be any dispute that HDRs have been phenomenally successful in focusing attention on human development aspects, and the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) may not have evolved without HDRs. There have been regional and sub-regional HDRs too, such as state-level ones in India. Among several development-cum-deprivation measures used in HDRs, HDI (human...

The European Commission recommended sweeping new changes to the European Union’s policy on the cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on Tuesday, unveiling a proposal to grant individual member states the right to decide for themselves whether to allow their domestic farmers to grow the altered crops. “I think that this proposal reflects a balanced approach to a sensitive issue, in particular for European citizens,” European Health Commissioner John Dalli told...