NEW DELHI: Farm loan waiver is necessary in the short term as farmers are unable to repay debts due to fall in agri-prices despite a bumper crop, renowned agriculture scientist MS Swaminathan has said.
From the rice paddies of Asia to the wheat fields of Australia, the soaring price of food is breaking the budgets of the poor and raising the spectres of hunger and unrest, experts warn. A billion people in Asia are seriously affected by the surging costs of daily staples such as rice and bread, the director general of the Asian Development Bank, Rajat Nag, has said. "This includes roughly about 600 million people who live on just under a dollar a day, which is the definition of poverty, and another 400 million who are just above that borderline,' he said.
Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today met agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan and sought his advice on how to make fallow land cultivable and increase productivity across the state. Members of the state agriculture commission had met a week ago and decided to seek the opinion of the relevant government departments on how to improve land productivity and ensure proper use of high-quality fertilisers.
Open Forum, the NGO which jointly organised Saturday's seminar on inflation with the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA), describes itself as a "development organisation'. As per its credentials, "Open Forum works towards use of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) for promoting sustainable development and human rights, in India and in all the five south Asian countries.'
"... Your ministry is responsible for all the destruction and killing of 12,000 people on the coast..."
To most Indians, turmeric or haldi is a part of growing up, a magic cure-all for the excesses of childhood. A classic "grandmother's remedy", the virulent yellow powder or paste has been applied to the
Sept.11 : In times when food is genetically manipulated and chemically contaminated, the metaphor "food for thought" can also stand for manipulated information and be toxic food for thought. Unfortunately, Dr M.S. Swaminathan
Professor M S Swaminathan has been acclaimed by the TIME magazine as one of the twenty most influential Asians of the 20th century and one of the only three from India, the other two being Mahatma Gandhi
