-The Times of India India accounts for the highest estimated number of undernourished people in any single country, with an estimated 194.6 million, or about one in every four such people in the world. Globally, the number of undernourished people has fallen by 216 million between 1990-92 and 2015, from just over a billion to 795 million. However, India's contribution to this fall has been small, with its numbers down by just...

-The Indian Express Among the Modi government’s many hits was one crucial miss — agriculture. The Narendra Modi sarkar’s performance in the first year has at least five major achievements and one major miss. To ensure that this neglect does not become its Achilles’ heel, the Modi sarkar will have to focus on and initiate reforms in this weakest link in the chain — agriculture. Else, it will not let the Indian...

-The Financial Express Sorai Village: Even as official data show food inflation at 5-6%, elevated levels compared with the subdued prices of most other items, farmers are barely realising remunerative prices for their produce, another reason why rural consumption demand is dismally low. Potato farmers in Uttar Pradesh, for example, are selling the vegetable at a fifth of the price a year ago, thanks to a glut caused by excess production...

-The Hindu The tragic NEPal quake is an opportunity to learn and understand the threats of great temblors. The NEPal earthquake of April 25 is the largest in the Himalayan region since the 1934 quake which measured 8.2 on the Richter scale and destroyed not only parts of central NEPal but also the plains of northern Bihar in India. Mahatma Gandhi, shaken by the Bihar tragedy, wrote in the Harijan that the...

-The Hindu The recurrence of a major earthquake on May 12 — this time measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale — with its epicentre near Kodari in NEPal, barely a fortnight after the devastating temblor in the landlocked country, has once again raised questions about preparedness for such disasters in the subcontinent. India is divided into five seismic zones, with Zone 5 being the most active and earthquake-prone. The Himalayan regions,...