BHUBANESWAR: The Rs 2-a-kg rice may have scripted a successful 'political' story in the State, but it has failed to translate into a successful 'anti-hunger' story.
This is not a general assumption rather the scientific inference of a well-researched study by Orissa MDG Forum a joint venture of Unicef, Orissa, and Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneswar (XIMB) released here today.
Starving people in drought-stricken west Africa are being forced to eat leaves and collect grain from ant hills, say aid agencies, warning that 10 million people face starvation across the region.
With food prices soaring and malnourished livestock dying, villagers were turning to any sources of food to stay alive, said Charles Bambara, Oxfam officer for the west African region.
A severe drought is causing increasing hunger across the Eastern Sahel in west Africa, affecting 10 million people in four countries, aid agencies warned on Friday. In Niger, the worst-affected country, 7.1 million are hungry, with nearly half considered highly food insecure because of the loss of livestock and crops coupled with a surge in prices.
Its only link to the outside world, the Anini-Roing road, having been hit by landslides at several places, Dibang Valley district in eastern Arunachal Pradesh has remained cut off from the rest of the world for more than six weeks now. The district shares 200 km of international border with China.
Rural India is much poorer than officially thought. The Planning Commission has accepted the report of a committee, led by economist Suresh Tendulkar, which estimates that more than 41 per cent of rural India is poor. States will now have to issue more below poverty line (bpl) cards. But is the report an accurate index of poverty?
Not only has food grain production declined in the last decade but despite high inflation, food expenditure levels of the rural public have remained frozen at Rs 87 to buy 9 kg of grain
Unimpressed by the progress made under the well-known KBK assistance plan, where over Rs 1,600 crore has been spent over the last decade, a concerned Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has asked the Planning Commission to immediately carry out a fresh time-bound re-evaluation of the programme with special focus on the state of poverty and hunger.
INDIA BECAME independent soon after the Great Bengal Famine that claimed two million lives. An independent and free India reclaimed her food sovereignty and food security.
