-The Hindu Ignoring hunger and malnutrition will have significant costs to any country's development. Nutrition improvement has both intrinsic and instrumental value One of the disappointments in the post-reform period in India has been the slow progress in the reduction of malnutrition, especially with reference to the underweight among children. In fact, the rate of change in the percentage of underweight children has been negligible in the period 1998-99 to 2005-06; the...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The decision to reduce the powers of the drug pricing body goes against the interest of public Health. The decision of the Government of India to withdraw the power of the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) to set price controls on drugs that are not on the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) raises questions on the Narendra Modi regime's commitment to people's welfare. One must ask if...

-The Hindu Plea for cocoon procurement facility, silk reeling centre Dindigul (Tamil Nadu): Better procurement price, good yield in a short gestation period and stable market for cocoons throughout the year - all these factors have attracted many farmers to take up sericulture. Rapid expansion of sericulture farms has pushed Dindigul district to the third place in the State in cocoon production. Koovanuthu Pudur near Saanaarpatti is a major cocoon production centre in...

-The Hindu A well recharge pit was also dug for harvesting the rains Appiyampatti, a small hamlet in Dindugal district of Tamil Nadu, is one among the several villages in the state which has been facing a severe drought for the past over five years. Even during such a critical phase when several farmers left farming and started moving out in search of alternative work Mr. V.Chellamutu remained anchored in the village to...

-The Times of India CHENNAI: Poultry farmers can now afford to count their profits before their chickens hatch - and they are big, with chickens weighing on average twice as much as they did 50 years ago. The broiler chicken of today, a product of controlled breeding, weighs around 2.2kg as compared to 1.2kg before 1960, say veterinarians and chicken farm owners. Contract farming started in India in the early 1960s, taking...