Prof. Thomas Pogge of Yale University on Tuesday strongly advocated the need for global institutional reforms to eradicate poverty, ensure human rights and secure global justice. He suggested establishing a Health Impact Fund (HIF) to complement the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Prof. Pogge made these observations while delivering the First Dr. Arjun K. Sengupta Memorial Lecture at O. P. Jindal Global University in Sonepat near Delhi. Prof. Pogge said:...

-IANS   With harsh wintry conditions sapping the juice out of Himachal Pradesh's fruit production this season, potatoes in the picturesque Lahaul Valley have been among the few crops that have seen an increase in production. "This year Lahaul's seed potato varieties have a bumper crop after two consecutive crop failures. The weather remained congenial throughout the season," Amar Chand Dogra, managing director of the Lahaul Seed Potato Growers Cooperative Marketing Ltd, told...

Biraj Patnaik, principal adviser to the Supreme Court commissioners on the right to food, is up in arms against the National Food Security Bill. “Despite multiple meetings and many suggestions put forward, what we have is a mockery of a bill. The government has made a dog’s breakfast out of the right to food bill,” he exclaims. Patnaik’s is not a one-off complaint. Some argue that the country’s law-making process is...

Close to one lakh children below the age of five years died of diarrhoea attributable to rotavirus infection in 2008, accounting for 22 per cent of the total deaths reported globally, reports the latest edition of the Lancet Infection DISEases magazine. Diarrhoea related with the rotavirus infection resulted in 453,000 deaths worldwide in 2008 among children younger than five years—37 per cent of deaths attributable to diarrhoea with five countries accounting...

-The United Nations   The United Nations independent expert on the right to food cautioned today that smallholder farmers face the risk of exploitation under contract farming arrangements with processing or marketing companies, and recommended mechanisms that could ensure that such agreements are fairer. “Contract farming for its benefits, which I am not denying, nevertheless locks farmers into one segment of the food chain,” said Olivier De Schutter, the Special Rapporteur on the...