NEW DELHI: Agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan on Tuesday came down heavily on proposals to import foodgrains to tide over the shortage due to the poor monsoon this year. He said that if only the government had taken adequate measures to modernise foodgrains storage systems, such an eventuality would not have arisen. “The importers lobby would always be there to make profit out of poverty. But the government needs to take...

To help the poor, there must be one agreed way of identifying them first. If perceptions differ regarding who is poor and, thus, how many poor people there are, it will be difficult to select the right institutional measures and the amount of money to be spent on poverty eradication programmes. The differences between the findings of the N.C. Saxena report and and the Planning Commission’s assessment of the below-the-poverty-line...

Southern Kerala state is known for the lush expanses of cardamom, pepper, tea and rubber that grow on its misty hills, and the bountiful catches of fish on a coastline punctuated by lagoons and backwaters. But a cloud in the form of a a free trade deal with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc hovers over this picture of plenty. With the Indo-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (FTA) now...

Academics can have relevance beyond the printed word and Jean Dreze has proved that this is indeed the case. He has deservedly won the Economic Times’ Policy Change Agent of the Year 2009 for his outstanding work in poverty alleviation and rural employment. A development economist, Dreze has taken his academic persuasions to the real world — he not only played a major role in designing the National Rural Employment...

India has recently witnessed the release of two important environment reports just before the Copenhagen Summit to be held in December, 2009. The National State of the Environment India (SoE) Report 2009 was launched on 11 August, 2009 by Minister of Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh. Another report titled United Nation’s World Economic and Social Survey (WESS) Report 2009 was released in early September, 2009 by Sunita Narain, Director, Centre...