From equity and livelihood perspectives, livestock rearing must be at the centre stage of poverty alleviation programmes.  Livestock rearing is a key livelihood and risk mitigation strategy for small and marginal farmers, particularly across the rain-fed regions of India. Livestock products comprised 32 per cent of the total value of agriculture and allied activities in 2006-07 which was a noticeable increase from 27 per cent in 1999-2000 and from 1980-81...

The Central budget of 2010-11 is a further step in the realisation of a vision of India vibrant with the income, wealth, saving, education and the entrepreneurial energy of the top 5-10 per cent of the population and the rest of Indians, serving that minority and surviving as barely literate, malnourished multitude.  With the accession of Rajiv Gandhi to power, a vision began to germinate. That vision was that of...

Birth gender disparity is greatest in the region China, India together account for over 85 million of the nearly 100 million “missing'' women The problem of “missing girls'' – a scenario where more boys are born than girls, as girl foetuses are presumably aborted, and women die from health and nutrition neglect – is growing in Asia Pacific. Birth gender disparity is the greatest in East Asia, where 119 boys are born...

IN GREEN-LIGHTING the new “nutrient- based” fertiliser policy, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee pulled off a political coup, overriding the objections of the once-powerful UPA allies, DMK and NCP. What’s more, it is those very critics who will be responsible for the actual delivery of benefits to farmers under the new scheme — which is a tall order. With Mamata Banerjee’s TMC putting in only a token caveat, the reservations of Union...

An empowered group of ministers (eGoM) has urged the government to delink the proposed National Food Security Act (NFSA) from nutritional security and keep the issue price of wheat and rice flexible under the Act. But a top official of the agriculture ministry said some members of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government want NFSA to be an “umbrella legislation” addressing social security concerns. “The finance ministry is of the view that...