India has been lauded for its remarkable overall economic growth of over 8% over the last five years. But despite this high and relatively stable growth, India's underbelly is soft. The agriculture sector is performing below expectations, with growth rate of around 2.8%, it is way below the Eleventh Plan target of 4%. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimates that 22% of India's population is undernourished. Child malnutrition is...
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Without thumb, a life unliveable by Alamgir Hossain
His right thumb severed, Santosh Mondal didn’t know how he would harvest his crop. So he killed himself last night. The tragedy mirrors the desperation of not only a poor Murshidabad farmer but also of a state where politics revolves around farming even if it does not make economic sense. The suicide over a digit that most take for granted becomes all the more stark against the backdrop that Santosh could have...
More »A profitable education by Sadhna Saxena
While India’s new Right to Education Act seeks to bring free and compulsory education for all children, it seems to short-change them through an unrealistic vision of the private sector’s involvement. In August 2009, the Right to Education Act was passed in the Indian Parliament with no debate, by the fewer than 60 members who happened to be attending the session that day. Not that the Act was an open-and-shut...
More »KIT study paints grim picture
Most children working in dhabas and tea stalls in the capital harbour dreams of going to school, but their poverty-ravaged families and employers discourage them, says an ongoing study being conducted by legal students of Kalinga Institute of Technology (KIT), Bhubaneswar. The KIT team comprising Vaishali Singh, Neha Tripathi and Shika is in the city for a month to study the status of deprived urban children working in dhabas, hotels and...
More »Calling attention by Papri Sri Raman
A UNESCO dossier examines the problems faced by the original tribal inhabitants of the Andaman islands. SINCE the 1780s, a variety of players have vied for space in the Andaman archipelago. Today, apart from the three wings of the country's armed forces, others including rice farmers, timber merchants and academics are trying to push out its original inhabitants from their traditional habitats. For the first time in the past 150 years,...
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