-Down to Earth Is India ready to protect itself from the onslaught of food and nutrition industry? India is shouldering a huge burden of malnutrition-in the absence of government figures, a dipstick survey by non-profit HUNGaMA in 2012 suggests that 59 per cent of the country's children could have stunted growth and 42 per cent could be underweight. While the government is still struggling to tackle the problem, the food and nutrition...

-Reuters Raipur/Patna: The deaths of at least 23 children who were poisoned after eating a free school meal has triggered an outcry over food safety just as the ruling Congress party is set to launch an ambitious plan to feed 800 million poor, with an eye on elections due within a year. Congress leader Sonia Gandhi‘s national subsidised food project includes free school meals and expands existing handouts to make it probably...

-Grist Media The proposed Food Security Bill will likely raise the demand for dal across India. While farmers and consumers are against it, the government keeps favouring the agri-industry and importing more and more cheap versions to offset rising inflation. But why won't India produce its own dal anymore? Nowhere are Canada's agricultural production plans tracked more closely than in India's Ministry of Food & Consumer Affairs. As it struggles to meet...

-The Hindu The recent launch of the first Dalit venture fund occasions an examination of the moral and ethical emptiness of capitalism History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics B.R. Ambedkar If only Milind Kamble, founder of the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DICCI) and Chandra Bhan Prasad, Dalit thinker, columnist and DICCI mentor, had imbibed the wisdom of Manning Marable's How Capitalism Underdeveloped...

-The Hindu In a region of poor yields, a gritty woman farmer succeeds even in years of crop failure. But high costs are depleting Vidarbha's success stories "I am the farmer, he did no farming. He only moons over his cattle, he loves those cows (even if they yield just a litre of milk each). Men hang around the village, women are in the fields." Leelabai is speaking of one of Yavatmal's most...