-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...

Any new system for the socio-economic progress of Dalits and other vulnerable sections must not lose sight of Special Component Plan goals. THE Planning Commission's “Approach to the 12th Five Year Plan” deals with the Scheduled Castes (S.C.s) briefly in a portion of Chapter 11 titled “Social and Regional Equity”. It, however, significantly mentions the need to devise a new system that can overcome the difficulties experienced with regard to the...

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...

-IANS   Assam has been allocated $2.5 million by a UN body to help improve hygiene in rural areas, stressing on the economic gains that would follow "when people spend less money on preventable sanitation-related diseases". India is among 10 countries - seven African and three Asian - which have been identified for a five-year project. India loses $53.4 billion annually due to poor sanitation and hygiene, according to a recent report...

The finance ministry has asked the telecom department not to entrust state-owned BSNL with the Rs 20,000-crore project to build a nationalbroadband network to take high-speed internet to the hinterlands. It has recommended that a special purpose vehicle (SPV), consisting of many mobile phone companies, be entrusted with implementing this project, while adding that all stakeholders should be chosen through a transparent and competitive bidding process. The telecom department had identified...