The US Senate is expected to pass the Global Food Security Act, new legislation that would significantly expand the government's commitment to combating hunger worldwide with a broad range of measures and more money, and a special coordinator, or "food czar", to oversee implementation of these provisions across agencies. A proposed new fund would allocate several billion dollars over five years to research and development, to enhance "food security, agriculture productivity,...

Counting the “invisible” children of Mother India.  While the current focus of political debate is on ‘caste and census,' there is another important aspect that deserves attention. This concerns disability. For decades after our independence, there was no effort to actually count how many of us have any disability. There were estimates- informed or otherwise- but no factual figures. All our government's plans and budgets, rules and regulations, proclamations and posturing...

Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today urged state farmers to switch over to organic agriculture to prevent further contamination of underground water sources with pesticides. He was addressing farmers at sangat darshan programmes in several villages of Muktsar. He also released funds for the development of the villages. He urged farmers to opt for cash crops that would not only result in their prosperity but would also help to improve water...

Senior Congress leader and former sports minister Mani Shanker Aiyer has slammed the current United Progressive Alliance government under Dr Manmohan Singh for the huge amount of 'wasteful expenditure' being incurred on the Commonwealth games, saying that if a part of this money had been spent on the Bhopal Gas victims it would have brought the affected 'some relief'. The outspoken Aiyer, who was recently nominated to the Rajya Sabha, has...

A pilot survey will be launched next month to assess the number of the poor in the country on a new set of parameters ahead of the scheduled BPL census in April 2011. The government has decided to launch the pilot project in 260 villages across the country to test the parameters suggested by a former Planning Commission member amid a debate on the best way of doing such counts. The project,...