The global cost of disasters is growing: The economic burden of disasters is intensifying. While the direct costs of disasters averaged $70–80 billion a year between 1970 and 2000, between 2001 and 2020 these annual costs grew significantly to $180–200 billion. But the real cost is far higher. Disaster costs …
MANY southeast Asian countries, including India, have been able to control several nutritional diseases such as kwashiorkor, beriberi and pellagra. Kwashiorkor, a form of malnutrition caused by protein deficiency, is especially prevalent among children. Pellagra, a disease caused by a deficiency of vitamins found in milk, liver and yeast, is …
THE TRAGEDY of Somalia, whose people are starving to death by the hundreds each day, is being worsened by pitiless warlords who have reportedly signed multimillion-dollar contracts with Swiss and Italian firms to use the East African country as a dumping ground for vast quantities of toxic wastes. The UN …
WHEN ZIMBABWE abandoned its traditional, drought-resistant maize in favour of new, high-yield varieties, it sowed the seeds for a famine that obliterated about half of the country's staple food crop this year. Failure of the rains is only part of the story: Farmers in Zimbabwe -- until recently regarded one …
WHEN the UN threatened to block relief supplies to Somalia unless its troops were deployed there, the warring factions in the drought-stricken, strife-ridden country, after rejecting the idea, capitulated. But even before the 500 UN soldiers arrived, local militia looted a part of the first UN food shipments. Fierce fighting …
THE ELEVEN countries in southern Africa, with a population of over 120 million, are in the midst of a drought of unprecedented severity in the region, mainly due to the failure of last year's rains. The UN World Food Programme has estimated that about 18 million people in the region …
IT IS perhaps unfair for an economist to review a book which was originally submitted as a PhD thesis in anthropology. Unlike other anthropological works, a doctoral dissertation is necessarily less than a good read. And, as an academic work, the reviewer inevitably shows a bias, wondering much of the …
The current drought has spurred Indian agricultural scientists to formulate guidelines for combating different rain scarcity situations -- when rains start late, when they are less than normal, when they taper off early, and when there is a big break in rainfall in between. This exercise will be the first …
LARGE parts of India are again in the grip of drought -- from the dry regions of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Marathwada and Vidarbha to the high rainfall state of Kerala. By official meteorological accounts, this was a near normal year. The pundits in New Delhi's Mausam Bhawan have a map of …
THE current drought across central and western India and Kerala is forcing attention once again on how to deal with the problem. Ecologists have always had a deep interest in the problem, their argument being that societal susceptibility to drought increases with ecological degradation. And, through ecological improvement, this susceptibility …
Vilas Salunke Grain Gaurav Pratislithan Post Box No 1202 67 Hadapsar Industrial Estate Puna 411 013 R K Patil Centre for Applied Systems and Analysis Ganesh Kutir 1st Floor 68 Prarthana Samaj Road Ville Parts (E) Bombay 400 057 Anna Hazare Village Ralegan Siddhi Taluka Painter Alunadhagar district Maharashtra M …
IT is at a time like this that the famous Ralegan Siddhi village in Ahmednagar district -- the handiwork of a social worker, Anna Hazare -- stands out with a difference. It is green and it is surviving. There is indeed stress but no distress. The village has received only …
THE morning hours in Barapal, near Udaipur, present a curious sight. Hundreds of headloaders crowd around the national highway looking for vehicles to transport charcoal or firewood to Udaipur. All of them are victims of drought. Selling wood illegally felled from government forests is their last resort for survival. Kesa …
THE misery caused by this year"s drought was unnecessary. Typical of India"s weather, rainfall in several parts dipped below the normal last year but these fluctuations were small. Yet we failed to deal with the problems caused by this shortfall in rain. It is obvious that as India"s population grows, …
RULERS, universally, create beliefs to justify their rule. The British, certainly, were convinced that the lazy, hungry Indians were incapable of ruling them- selves. In this book, Famines, David Arnold, a British historian working at the London School of Oriental and African studies, has placed the subject of famines on …
