-The Financial Express The Odisha experience shows that PDS can play a pivotal role in bringing convergence and making India’s two important missions—food and nutrition security—successful in a short time. New Delhi: India’s public distribution system (PDS) is the largest food security programme in the world, which covers nearly 60% of the population and costs Rs 1.45 trillion—close to 1.4% of the national income. PDS has often been criticised for its structure,...

-The Hindu As the U.S. loses interest in multilateralism in trade, India should actively try to arrest the organisation’s slide Less than 25 years after the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was created, its future as a body overseeing multilateral trade rules is in doubt. The failure of the recent ministerial meeting at Buenos Aires is only symptomatic of a decline in its importance. Too ambitious? When the WTO was born in 1995, replacing the...

-The Financial Express How about planting bamboo extensively along the banks of the Yamuna to sequester the carbon from Delhi’s vehicle emissions? According to the World Bank, India’s per person emission of carbon dioxide was 1,730 kg a year in 2014. Another website says this has risen to 1,900 kg in 2016. Bharathi Namby, a scientist, says it will take just five bamboo plants a year to make an Indian carbon-neutral,...

-The Times of India CHANDIGARH: Agri marketing in Punjab is unimaginable without commission agents (arhtiyas). But a section of farmers in the state are beginning to respond to farmer producer organizations' (FPOs) attempt at marketing as an alternative to the traditional direct selling. The move is also expected to help farmers break the wheat-paddy cycle and take to growing vegetables. A study sponsored by National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD)...

-Scroll.in Instead of accepting that millions of Indians need better nutrition, the organisation’s economists have argued that the Global Hunger Index is flawed. The Global Hunger Index put out by International Food Policy and Research Institute was released on October 2017 and tracks the state of hunger worldwide. India’s Global Hunger Index score is placed at 100 out of 119 countries. Instead of reflecting on the state of food security in India,...