Eighty labourers, both men and women, are at work at Thiruvanduthurai village in Tiruvarur district of Tamil Nadu, about 325 km south of Chennai. They are digging a pond - about an acre wide and six feet deep - funded under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, or MGNREGS. Outside the work perimeter, two middle aged men look on, worried. P. Murugan and K. Govindaraj are farmers from the...
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Poverty norm or calorie norm? by Swarna S Vepa
Kerala and Tamil Nadu with the lowest calorie consumption seem to show better health outcome indicators This report, a joint initiative by the Ms Swaminathan Research Foundation — an institution with a remarkable long term commitment to issues related to food security — and the United Nations World Food Programme, should serve as an excellent hand book on urban food insecurity. Aside from providing all the relevant information in a consolidated...
More »‘Yes, storage, sub-standard grain are problems'
The government on Thursday admitted to problems in storage as well as supply of sub-standard foodgrains to the poor after senior Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat expressed serious concern in the Rajya Sabha over grain rotting. “I do admit,” Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said after Ms. Karat charged the government with supplying rotten foodgrains to remote tribal areas. She showed samples of spoiled wheat and rice in the...
More »Second green revolution is the need of the hour by Kunal Bose
The government will certainly not indulge in self congratulation for agriculture recording a growth of 5.4 per cent to 232.07 million tonnes in 2010-11 as this is happening on a low production base of 218.11 million tonnes last year when the country experienced the worst south-west monsoon since 1972. In fact, the major concern of the government is farm sector’s niggardly growth of 2.8 per cent in the first four...
More »Farmers feel left out by Latha Jishnu & Jyotika Sood
The budget is more concerned about the consumer than the grower A LOOMING food crisis in the world and high food inflation rates at home made Pranab Mukherjee’s proposals to boost agriculture in his 2011 budget more keenly watched than usual. These are factors that clearly weighed with the finance minister who repeatedly said that his principal concern this year has been the continuing high food prices. The squeeze on the...
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