If women in rural areas had the same access to land, technology, financial services, education and markets as men, agricultural production could be increased and the number of hungry people reduced by 100-150 million, FAO said today in its 2010-11 edition of The State of Food and Agriculture report. Yields on plots managed by women are lower than those managed by men, the report said. But this is not because women...

Child rights groups have expressed disappointment over the Union Budget for ignoring the needs of millions of children. A statement issued by Haq, a child rights group, said an initial run-through of the allocations showed a minimal increase for protection of “aam bachcha” and a drop in the allocation for the Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) that set the tone for all protection measures. The overall increase in the percentage of the...

Thanks to the Right to Information Act, 2005, and also the activism of NGOs and of the media, a culture of accountability is growing in the country. That is the good news. However, the media, NGOs and RTI activists can only do so much. They can focus the attention of the public and parliamentarians on egregious scams, but rarely address the systemic flaws that result in leakage of funds. We have...

In an address to the Berlin Agriculture Ministers meeting last month, World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director General Pascal Lamy said export restrictions are a prime cause of recent surges in global food prices, and countries should find other ways of securing domestic supplies (“WTO chief: Alternatives to food export curbs needed”, Business Standard, January 23). Though export restrictions are an important contributor to rising food prices, they are by no...

Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac has said the State government may push a legislation to regulate lending by microfinance institutions. Addressing a press conference here on Sunday, he pointed out the relevance of the Andhra Pradesh Microfinance Institutions (Regulation of Money Lending) Bill, 2010. “The entry of the Janasree Sustainable Development Mission into the microfinance sector poses a risk. Leader of the Opposition Oommen Chandy should clarify his stand on the risk...