The goal of food for all can be achieved only through greater and integrated attention to production, procurement, preservation and public distribution. The President, in her address to Parliament on June 4, 2009, announced: “My Government proposes to enact a new law — the National Food Security Act — that will provide a statutory basis for a framework which assures food security for all. Every family below the poverty line in...

Behind Delhi's radical makeover for the Commonwealth Games are 150,000 migrants labourers toiling hard to meet the October deadline. TOI-Crest gives this silent workforce a name and a face. Thirty-five-year old Vijay is from Sagar village in Madhya Pradesh. His thekedar, who makes regular trips to the villages to round up skilled and unskilled labourers, had told him he'd be working on the beautification of Delhi University roads under the...

Mangalore air crash highlights two petitions highlighting safety violations in the Mangalore tabletop airport, dismissed by the Karnataka High Court in ’92 and by the Supreme Court in ’02 Apex court dismisses petition against mining in Niyamgiri hills in 2008; now a global focus point The same year, the apex court dismisses PIL against the building of the Commonwealth Games village on the Yamuna riverbed. Why has the UPA government, which loses no...

Mokhada, Maharashtra: In the last 15-16 years, Jhaluriben Baria has had eight children, two of whom died within five days of their birth. Her youngest child Heera Gopabhai Baria, a boy, is seven months old. The infant is ensconced in a plastic sack strung across two sticks at the entrance of their house in Panchyasan village in Devgadh Baria block of Dahod district, Gujarat. Playing alongside is his sister, Premilaben Baria....

In India, where traditionally boys have been preferred over girls, a village in backward Bihar state has been setting an example by planting trees to celebrate the birth of a girl child. In Dharhara village, Bhagalpur district, families plant a minimum of 10 trees whenever a girl child is born. And this practice is paying off. Nikah Kumari, 19, is all set to get married in early June. The would-be...