Even as women agriculturalists form more than half of the total global population involved in farming it is actually the men folk who continue to receive better training leaving the other gender behind and poverty index screwed up, claimed a report released on Thursday. The report Training for Rural Development: Agriculture and Enterprise Skills for Women by City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development said developing countries can tackle poverty...

Encouraging women's participation in politics, the historic bill to reserve 33 percent of seats for them in parliament and the legislatures will impact the country's political scenario, the patriarchal system and the caste struggle in rural India, experts say. Bibhu Mahapatra, consultant of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project on Legal Empowerment, said: 'The 73rd constitutional amendment, passed in 1992, gave constitutional recognition to local self governance and reserved 33...

The economist and political commentator who was appointed to a four-member team of the UN to recommend reforms to the global financial system critiques Budget 2010 Economist and political commentator Prabhat Patnaik, currently vice-chair of the Kerala Planning Board, is a strong critic of the government’s economic policies. In 2008, Patnaik, who has taught at JNU since the 1970s, was appointed to a four-member team of the UN to recommend...

Sesikaran says Bt crop’s long-term effect on health can be studied only if it’s approved for commercial production Concerns raised by agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan, cited by the government as among the reasons to put a halt to the release of Bt brinjal, will be impossible to address, according to the head of a state-run laboratory. Swaminathan, 84, credited with the success of the Green Revolution of the 1960s that made India...

With the government successfully managing to partially lighten its burden by switching over to a nutrient-based subsidy scheme for fertilizers, the Economic Survey has now raised questions on the impact that food, fertilizer, kerosene and diesel subsidies have on poverty eradication. Instead, it has pitched for direct subsidy to the poor instead of price control, ostensibly to reduce diversion to the open market, leakage and adulteration. “The impact of these [food, fertilizer,...