-Frontline Two draft Bills on the Tribal Sub-Plan and the Scheduled Caste Sub-Plan raise hopes of granting these decades-old schemes statutory status and ensuring allocation of funds in the Central and State budgets for their implementation. IN a significant legislative move, the Union government's Ministry of Tribal Affairs released a draft Bill for the implementation of the long-neglected Tribal Sub-Plan (TSP), a special programme mandated by the Planning Commission to benefit the...

-Grain.org "We take care of the cow and the cow takes care of us," says Marayal, a farmer in Thalavady, Tamil Nadu. Her two cows produce 6 to 10 litres of milk a day, which she sells for 30-40 cents per litre. Across India, there are millions of backyard dairy farmers like Marayal. Each owning just one or two cows, these farmers supply millions more families and hundreds of thousands of informal...

-The Hindu Drop attributed to devastation by three successive cyclones ELURU (Andhra Pradesh): West Godavari district registered a sharp decline in the yield of paddy in kharif. The trend is attributed to the extensive damage caused by a series of three cyclones, one after the other. The crop cutting experiments undertaken by the Agriculture Department estimated the yield to be around 8.67 lakh tonnes, against the initial expectations of 12.36 lakh tonnes....

-The Hindu     Delicacies sold like hot cakes with stalls running out of food before 8 p.m. New Delhi: Now, savour an idli for Re.1 and other South Indian delicacies at equally attractive prices in Delhi. Chennai's popular ‘Amma Canteen' has become an instant hit with Delhiites on the first day of its three-day sojourn at the Tamil Nadu Bhawan here. Visitors who came to attend Pongal celebrations thronged the ‘Amma Canteen' stall and...

-The New Indian Express   Most people would have been shocked to read the year-end report that India has been ranked 63rd, much below countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, on the Global Hunger Index (GHI), a yardstick used by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to comprehensively measure global hunger. The index is calculated as an average of three indices-undernourishment, underweight children and low child mortality rate-and is measured on a...