Kerala and Tamil Nadu with the lowest calorie consumption seem to show better health outcome indicators This report, a joint initiative by the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation — an institution with a remarkable long term commitment to issues related to food security — and the United Nations World Food Programme, should serve as an excellent hand book on urban food insecurity. Aside from providing all the relevant information in a consolidated...

Budget 2011-12 and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. THREE decades ago, in the early years of the Special Component Plan (SCP) for Scheduled Castes – very recently renamed inappropriately as Scheduled Castes Sub-Plan (SCSP) – Indira Gandhi on her return as Prime Minister wrote two historical D.O. letters dated March 12, 1980, one to Central Ministers and the other to State Chief Ministers, regarding the SCP in the Central...

Releasing the election manifesto here on Wednesday, West Bengal Left Front Committee Chairman Biman Bose said the eighth Left Front government will focus on “agriculture, industry, peace, democracy and progress,” in the State if it returns to power. Listing the objectives of the Front in the coming five years, the manifesto states that it wants to ensure that West Bengal is one of the top-ranked States on the three parameters of...

Just reclassified Rs 1.46 lakh crore of spending as capital investment. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s Budget for 2011-12 seems to have used a new accounting system to make a virtue of necessity. Committed to provide funds to run the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme or MGNREGS, Mukherjee has transferred the entire financial allocation for the scheme under a head that will now help him take credit for a reduced effective...

“Budget is more than a document of income and expenditure. People expect it to tackle the twin problems of poverty and social injustice while ensuring better income and standard of living.” Country’s first woman Finance Minister of any state government, Upinderjit Kaur, said this while presenting her first budget and last of the present Akali-BJP government on Monday. With the state slated to go to polls early next year, the Rs...