Apni kheti, apna khaad / Apna beej, apna swaad (Our own farm, our own fertiliser / Our own seeds, our own taste) -- Prakash Singh Raghuvanshi. A farmer from Tandia village in Varanasi has a solution to India's burgeoning food crisis. In a land where poverty, hunger, malnutrition and farmer suicides are rampant, Prakash Singh Raghuvanshi's innovation could work wonders. He has single-handedly developed a number of high yielding, nutritious...

With more than 400 million Indians going to bed hungry each day, food security has become a crucial issue. On June 4 last year, the president made an announcement: “My government proposes to enact a new law — the National Food Security Act — that will provide statutory basis for a framework which assures food security for all. Every family below the poverty line in rural as well as urban...

Bihar's programme of filing RTI applications through a call center is a novel one. The question is whether the model is effiicient enough to be replicated in other states like Karnataka. If you are in Bihar, you can get electronic goods repaired, phone numbers, buy things through call centres — and also file an RTI application. Zafar Hassan has filed two applications in the past two years through call centres,...

Farmers in drought hit districts in this unusually heavy rains monsoon season will get a diesel subsidy of Rs 500 per hectare, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar announced here on Friday at the start of the National Conference on Rabi Campaign, even as the Centre awaits bumper crop production for most key Kharif crops including paddy, pulses, coarse cereals and sugarcane. Oilseeds are the only crop where acreage is lower than...

Output of major crops, including sugar, will be better or equal to 2008-09’s production figures, but food prices are unlikely to return to that year’s levels. Food inflation may have permanently changed to stay on the higher side, economists have said. For a UPA government battling high prices, this could be a gloomy piece of news. A surplus monsoon has boosted acreages of all crops, according to food ministry figures. Output of...