Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a Rs. 125 crore relief packaged for the Leh cloudburst victims and said all houses destroyed by the natural calamity will be reconstructed within the next two-and-a-half months. Singh, who arrived in Leh on a day-long visit to take stock of relief and rehabilitation undertaken in the aftermath of flash floods in this mountainous region, said relief will be given from the Prime Minister's National Relief...

The 2010 Seeds Bill that has been introduced in Parliament does address some of the major concerns in the aborted 2004 version, but strangely a number of important correctives – on regulation, consistency and punishment – that had been incorporated in the 2008 version (which lapsed in 2009) have now been modified or dropped altogether. What forces are pushing the government to act against the interests of India’s farmers? The third...

The NAC suggests steps to ensure food security, but its recommendation for ‘selective universalisation' of the PDS is criticised. INDIA is home to some 230 million undernourished people – that is, 27 per cent of all undernourished people in the world. Worse still, more than half of all child deaths in India are because of malnutrition, and over 1.5 million children in the country are at the risk of being malnourished...

A team of central officials and experts will visit Jharkhand to assess the drought situation, Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar said in the Lok Sabha today, a day after Raj Bhavan added four names to the existing list of 12 parched districts. Tomorrow, the central team will go to Bihar, which has also recorded deficit rainfall this monsoon, on a similar mission. Pawar’s assurance came in response to a question raised by...

During my fieldwork in Tonk district of Rajasthan, a Dalit family once narrated a ‘miracle’ to me. In 2002, they faced a drought as bad as the chhappani akaal of 1900-02. But at the end of 2002, the Dalit family was pleasantly surprised: they still had some foodgrain left. This, the family members said, was a result of the good relief work done by the Ashok Gehlot government. Similar proactive State...