Crop scientist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, an enduring icon for the war on hunger who had helped steer India away from recurrent famines towards self-sufficiency in food, died on Saturday. Borlaug, whose research to improve wheat varieties, initiated in Mexico in 1945, led to the Green Revolution and helped save millions of people from starvation worldwide, died from cancer complications in Texas. He was 95. M.S. Swaminathan,...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is confident that the NREGS is his best bet to offset the drought but many grassroots activists are unsure of the scheme’s effectiveness, especially after some recent amendments. While the drought has spread to 246 districts, a heated debate rages on the poor peoples’ entitlements versus rural asset formation, even though in theory the two positions appear complementary. 14 organisations throughout the country are up in arms...

With shift to a high-input cash cropping system, the debt process bears an uncanny resemblance to the ‘catastrophe’ If it does not rain over the next week, farmers of Petlawad tehsil and its neighbouring regions in Jhabua might have to go the same way as their brethren in Vidarbha did. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan recently declared Jhabua, along with 36 other districts, drought-hit. The agricultural apparatus in...

KEY TRENDS   • As per the 2019 Global Hunger Index report, neighbouring countries such as China (GHI score: 6.5; GHI rank: 25), Sri Lanka (GHI score: 17.1; GHI rank: 66), Myanmar (GHI score: 19.8; GHI rank: 69), Nepal (GHI score: 20.8; GHI rank: 73), Bangladesh (GHI score: 25.8; GHI rank: 88) and Pakistan (GHI score: 28.5; GHI rank: 94) have outperformed India (GHI score: 30.3; GHI rank: 102) *13    • As per the 2018 Global Hunger Index report,...

The distribution of iron fortified rice is part of the Government of India's push to combat anaemia and it will become a near mandatory programme for the poor, for whom this rice will be inescapable i.e., PDS, ICDS, school meals, etc.  The fact-finding visit was organised by Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA-Kisan Swaraj) and the Right To Food Campaign (RTFC) between June 13th to 15th 2022, and included a...