Gujarat government has calculated that the state's farmers suffered losses to the tune of Rs 4,000 crore last year as a result of export restrictions imposed by the Government of India on raw cotton. "Thanks to the restrictions, Gujarat's farmers, who exported most of the raw cotton being produced in the state, were forced to sell the commodity to the yarn mills of south India at a price which is...

At least 29 of the 66 migrants crushed to death in east Delhi when a building collapsed on Monday night hailed from Bengal. The figure signposts the exodus of an abandoned generation and the inability of a state to retain its young or equip them for a better life elsewhere. The death of so many Bengalis has brought out in the open troubling issues that policymakers — both in the state...

The food distribution agencies of states across India have failed to lift the desired quantities of foodgrains under the additional allocation made recently for the Public Distribution System, says the Food Corporation of India (FCI), the central government’s procurement and storage agency. FCI sought instructions from the Centre in September to offload an additional 2.5 million tonnes for the PDS as a consequence of the reports about poor storage and rotting...

The Director-General of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, Dr. Jacques Diouf, announced at the Inter-Governmental Committee on World Food Security (CFS) that the combination of global food crisis and economic recession had taken the number of people affected across the world to over one billion. He described the number as “unacceptably high,” higher than in 1996 when the heads of states and governments committed themselves to reducing hunger by...

Striking workers at Foxconn India in Sriperumbudur near Chennai take on the corporate giant, demanding better wages. WORKERS at Foxconn-India in Sriperumbudur in Kancheepuram district, Tamil Nadu, have been on strike from September 24 demanding better wages. They also want the reinstatement of 24 suspended colleagues and the withdrawal of an eight-day wage cut slapped on some workers. That they have held out for so long is remarkable, not least...