-The United Nations   The United Nations agencies working to combat hunger today called for action to ensure long-term food security as a new report shows that high food prices are likely to continue and possible increase over the next decade. “The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2011,” an annual flagship report which the three Rome-based agencies jointly produced this year, states that small, import-dependent countries, particularly in Africa, are especially...

The Planning Commission’s poverty line affidavit has exposed how blissfully ignorant the glorified economists of the UPA are of the true reality of India The 2G spectrum scam, Commonwealth Games loot, cash-for-vote bribery, Lokpal fiasco, Pranab-Chidambaram duel on the Finance Ministry note, and the count goes on. It seems the UPA-II is stuck in a rut.  As if the battering by the united Opposition and hauling over the coals by civil...

The Planning Commission's laughable estimates of the ‘poverty line' follow from a mistake in method that it made 30 years ago and has clung to ever since. The affidavit that the Planning Commission recently submitted before the Supreme Court stating that a person is to be considered ‘poor' only if his or her monthly spending is below Rs.781 (Rs.26 a day) in the rural areas and Rs.965 (Rs.32 a day) in...

Managing our soil and water resources in a sustainable and equitable manner needs a new political vision, which can be expressed through the proposed Land Acquisition Bill and the recently formed Global Soil Partnership. On the basis of a proposal I had made three years ago, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) launched a Global Soil Partnership for Food Security and Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation at a multi-stakeholder conference, held...

-The United Nations   Global malaria deaths have dropped by about 38 per cent over the past decade, saving the lives of more than one million people, mostly children, through the efforts of a United Nations-led global partnership that put emphasis on prevention and treatment, particularly the use of insecticide-treated nets, according to a report unveiled today. Some 43 countries, 11 of them in Africa, have seen malaria cases or deaths drop by...