The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report warns that the region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, driving more extreme weather and posing serious threats to lives, ecosystems, and economies. In 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on …
FOR some years now, the Budget speeches of the Finance Minister have been impressive exercises in the art of rhetoric, that is, of verbal persuasion without reference to reality. It has often been the case that the more P. Chidambaram talked about a particular issue in his speech, the less …
ON a first reading, it may appear that the Union government's Budget for 2008-09 is very different from the neoliberal Budgets of the last decade and a half or more. The Budget speech contained an announcement of loan waiver for small and marginal farmers and 25 per cent write-off for …
The agricultural loan waiver valued at Rs.60,000 crore announced in Budget 2008-09 has dominated discussions on the Budget. Coming after four years of conservative reformism, in the midst of an agrarian crisis marked by farmers' suicides, this sudden decision to provide relief to an indebted farming community has been interpreted …
It is clear from Budget 2008 that the UPA, instead of abandoning its neoliberal agenda in an election year, has decided to stick to it resolutely. R.V. MOORTHY Finance Minister P. Chidambaram addressing a national conference on the Union Budget organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and …
A former employee of Modern Foods, a public sector unit later taken over by Hindustan Lever Limited that used to provide bread under ICDS in Uttar Pradesh until 2003, tells Down To Earth the inside story of how small players exploit the contract system on the condition of anonymity. Winning …
The implementation of the Supplementary Nutritional Programme (SNP) in Assam is "tardy and failure.' It is handicapped by long spells of non-feeding days, inequality in and manipulation of the allotment for nutrition, diversion of the allotment without compensatory replacement and incurring of excess expenditure,' according to a report of the …
Hunger is unpalatable. For a government that wishes to assert that it is not callous, it is particularly so. But hunger, with a capital H, is a pill that millions of people in Madhya Pradesh continue to swallow. In 2005 and 2006, Frontline reported acute malnutrition from Sheopur and Shivpuri …
A CAG report on health services in four major Delhi hospitals reveals the plight of the urban poor. In a slum in New Delhi. With more agrarian distress and fewer employment opportunities in rural areas, the population of the urban poor will only grow. JAIBUNNISSA is a full-time domestic worker …
The Sahariya tribal population in Sheopur district continues to suffer from hunger and malnutrition. LIFE for the Sahariya tribal people in Madhya Pradesh is an unending struggle against hunger, malnutrition, disease and, above all, neglect. In August 2006, Frontline reported hunger-related deaths in Sheopur district, which has a high concentration …
"THE tribals need to change their attitude and lifestyle," said R.K. Dixit, the Chief Medical Health Officer (CMHO) of Sheopur district in Madhya Pradesh, in response to a query about continuing reports of children starving to death in the region. The Sahariyas, one of the poorest tribal communities in Madhya …
Malnutrition deaths of children in a tribal hamlet point to the general state of welfare programmes in Madhya Pradesh. Two-year-old Suresh Sahariya of Patalgarh village has just been discharged from the district hospital in Sheopur, Madhya Pradesh. With his distended stomach, hollow eyes, and decaying and falling teeth, it seems …
The right-to-food campaign gets a fillip with the Common Minimum Programme of the new government incorporating far-reaching commitments on food security and the evolving constitutional doctrine that public welfare is a core obligation of the state. IT could be coincidence. Or it could be the case that committed public interventions …
