Dramatic cuts in industrial emissions of the global warming greenhouse gases that threaten to drastically change Earth’s climate are achievable in both developed and developing countries at acceptable cost with the right policies, the United Nations reported today. In a series of studies, the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), an agency mandated to promote sustainable industrial development in developing countries, highlighted the need to combine energy efficiency, renewable energy and the...

Everyone agrees that there is a food crisis. As ordinary members of the public we know there’s one every time we go out shopping for vegetables. My mother knows there’s a crisis because, after recently sacking her cook, she discovered the lady had left with all the onions in the house. The media agrees there’s one, and sends more TV crews to talk to onion farmers, even though the TV reporters...

The need for ensuring food security for the poor is indisputable. However, the means to do so have to be practical and fiscally sustainable. That is what the prime minister’s economic advisory council Chairman C Rangarajan and a group headed by him, which looked into the proposed food security law, seem to think. Most of the points raised by this panel about the recommendations of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory...

In India, people are upset about onions. Expensive cooking oil is causing hoarding in China, a practice banned by the government. Meanwhile, flour and bread are the main source of riots in Algeria and now Jordan. Worries over food prices are gathering pace and triggering alarm among politicians across the world. For there is nothing more likely to bring down a government than ignoring starving citizens, as Marie Antoinette found to...

The Rangarajan committee further dilutes the proposals for the food security bill   The Rangarajan committee set up by the Prime Minister to examine the recommendations of the NAC on the food security bill has submitted its report. It is not surprising to see that it has argued against even the minimalist framework of the NAC saying that expanding the PDS is impossible due to procurement and fiscal constraints. Although the full...