Scale Up Nutrition coordinates global action to root out under-nutrition. This week in New Delhi, nearly 1,000 international officials, scientists, advocates and development specialists are coming together to discuss how agriculture can be leveraged to improve nutrition and health. Nearly one-sixth of the people in our world are affected by chronic hunger. At any time, around a quarter of all children suffer from under-nutrition. Not only are they more likely to die,...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed a conference on ‘Leveraging agriculture for improving nutrition and health’ in New Delhi, organised by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), as part of International Policy Consultation. “Nutrition and health are issues are particularly topical today as the world faces rising food prices in many countries and there is growing recognition that climate change may endanger food security in many developing countries. Leveraging agriculture for...

We’re in the midst of a global food crisis — the second in three years. World food prices hit a record in January, driven by huge increases in the prices of wheat, corn, sugar and oils. These soaring prices have had only a modest effect on U.S. inflation, which is still low by historical standards, but they’re having a brutal impact on the world’s poor, who spend much if not...

An empirical analysis of the microfinance industry shows that the recommendations of the Malegam committee would have significantly more detrimental consequences than have been anticipated in the report. The microfinance exchange (www.mixmarket.org) is the most comprehensive data source for MFIs across the world. Table 1 displays the information on several parameters of Indian MFI performance for 2009. Column 2 displays the average values of performance parameters across 88 Indian MFIs....

The Planning Commission today said the annual agriculture growth target for the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17) would be set at 4% as it was in the previous two plans. The Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia also said, "During the current five year plan (2007-12) we are likely to achieve average farm growth of about 3.5%, which would be little lower than targeted 4%." Ahluwalia who was conferred a doctorate...