Jawaharlal Nehru University, set up as a centre for academic excellence for the whole country, mainly caters to students from UP and Bihar. This has come out in the draft performance audit report of Comptroller & Auditor General that also found JNU having diverted Rs 6.29 crore, allocated under Infrastructure Development Fund for OBC reservation, to pay electricity/water charges. The government auditor said JNU had failed to maintain an "all-India character...
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Delay in monsoon may spell doom for farmers by Nidhi Nath Srinivas
So it's not going to be a normal monsoon . That's hardly surprising. Indian rainfall is erratic in four out of 10 years. About 80% of our land mass is highly vulnerable to drought, floods and cyclones. 50 million Indians are exposed to drought every year. The agriculture ministry says 68% of India's sown area is subject to drought in varying degrees. Annual average rainfall is 1,160 mm. However, 85% of...
More »Ending Indifference: A Law to Exile Hunger? by Harsh Mander
Can we agree in this country on a floor of human dignity below which we will not allow any human being to fall? No child, woman or man in this land will sleep hungry. No person shall be forced to sleep under the open sky. No parent shall send their child out to work instead of to school. And no one shall die because they cannot afford the cost of...
More »The New Geopolitics of Food by Lester R Brown
From the Middle East to Madagascar, high prices are spawning land grabs and ousting dictators. Welcome to the 21st-century food wars. In the United States, when world wheat prices rise by 75 percent, as they have over the last year, it means the difference between a $2 loaf of bread and a loaf costing maybe $2.10. If, however, you live in New Delhi, those skyrocketing costs really matter: A doubling in...
More »In India's grain bowl, farms face threat from MNREGS
-Reuters Sitting at the edge of fields in the heart of India's grain bowl, Gurdayal Singh Malik shakes his head in resignation about the lack of workers needed for his 60-acre farm, blaming the government's flagship welfare program, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), for the shortage. Ever since the start of the program, which guarantees 100 days of work a year for rural households, the flow of...
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