The PM wants to curb inflation but not at the cost of growth. Also part of our economic narrative are the stories of those on the margins — inflation pushes them back into the poverty trap.
Abhijit Patnaik and Kamayani Singh write.
View from the farmWhile experts argue over linking salaries in the world's largest job guarantee programme to minimum wages, the poor are being denied their constitutional rights in a state where it supposedly works best, Congress-run Rajasthan. Namita Kohli writes.
Even as the government dithers on implementing increased food rates for the above poverty line category, the Supreme Court on Monday asked why the beneficiaries be entitled to subsidised rates.
Satya Prakash and
Zia Haq report.
In one of India’s poorest districts, Palamu, many survive on food meant for pigs and on roots that could prove toxic; hunger deaths go unrecorded. B Vijay Murty writes.
A day after HT reported that 16 children under the age of six had died due to malnutrition and related illnesses since April in Rafiq Nagar, a slum in Govandi, central government and civic officials visited the spot. Apeksha Vora reports.
While the high-profile Adarsh land and housing scam has brought Mumbai's near-lawless urban development into focus, a silent malnutrition crisis in the city points also to a grotesque imbalance in people's access to resources and a collapse of social services.
Apeksha Vora reports.
Mumbai's hunger map |
Mumbai's populationIn the shadows of towering skyscrapers and a soaring stock market, thousands of children in slums across the country's financial capital are falling through the cracks of a government scheme meant to prevent malnutrition. Many are dying before they turn six.
Apeksha Vora writes.
Mumbai's hunger map |
Mumbai's populationMost aanganwadi workers must reach out personally to overcome superstitious fears and caste and communal barriers before they can get the children under one roof to begin with.
Notwithstanding the government's reluctance, the Supreme Court on Friday again asked the Centre to forthwith allocate excess grains to the hungry and BPL families, saying it cannot be allowed to rot in godowns or be eaten by rats. Satya Prakash reports.
The Supreme Court on Monday ticked off the Government after it discovered that 67,539 tonnes of food grains rotted in godowns in Punjab and Haryana during 2009-10 and not just 7,000 tonnes as claimed by the Centre.
Satya Prakash reports.
Bumper Kharif crop expectedThe country has 42 per cent of the world’s underweight children, at a time when 67,000 tonnes of foodgrain were damaged in government godowns in Punjab and Haryana. Abhijit Patnaik writes.
India is among 29 countries with the highest levels of hunger, stunted children and poorly fed women, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute’s “Global Hunger Index 2010” released on Monday. Zia Haq reports.
Not far from Mumbai, babies born underweight and raised underfed are getting pneumonia. Debasish Panigrahi reports.
The food ministry has rejected both proposals of the National Advisory Council on food security. It said the government risked running up against supply constraints and taking on an unsustainable fiscal burden if the proposals were implemented. Liz Mathew reports.
After insisting in Parliament and elsewhere that the amount of rotting food grain revealed by the
Hindustan Times was “exaggerated”, Food and Civil Supplies Minister Sharad Pawar’s own ministry has proven him wrong.
Samar Halarnkar and
Bhadra Sinha report.
Special: Tracking Hunger