The state government will open 583 foodgrain banks at villages across jharkhand and provide grains to every below poverty line (BPL) family immediately. Food and civil supplies minister Mathura Prasad Mahto said this today after a review of the district under North Chotanagpur commissionerate, where he instructed officials to check hoarders and prevent hunger deaths by supplying foodgrain free of cost to the poor. The minister said the government had also decided...

The area under wheat this year has increased to 29.1 million hectares, compared to 28.2 million hectares in the corresponding period last year. Higher coverage is reported from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. Sowing is marginally lower in West Bengal. Production is expected to exceed last year's 80.17 million tonnes. According to data released by the Agriculture Ministry, the coverage of rabi crops is 51.92 million hectares, against 50.59...

The country's most ambitious medical study to count the number of people with diabetes has found 44 lakh people with the condition in Maharashtra. The study's first phase also found another 69 lakh people with pre-diabetes living in the state. Roughly, Maharashtra has as many people with diabetes as Mumbai's population of 1.2 million during the 2001 census. India has been infamously called the world's diabetes capital on the basis of...

The revised daily wage for NREGS workers is still lower than the minimum wages paid in several States. A CONTROVERSY seems to have surfaced between the Prime Minister's Office and the National Advisory Council (NAC) on the issue of wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The NAC has been arguing for some time that there should be parity between wages under the National Rural Employment...

The government’s bill for funding the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has risen steeply, due to its decision to revise wage rates under these projects and to link these to the inflation rate. The government had agreed to indexation, but not to activists’ demand to pay at each state’s set minimum wage rates, indexed to inflation. The wage rates continue to be delinked from the statutory minimums applicable; in many...