• Key Facts

• Farmers' suicides

• Rural distress

• Debt Trap

• Unemployment

• Migration

• GENDER

• Displacement

• Right to Food  

• Right to Work (MG-NREGA)

• Social Audit

• Right to Information

• Right to Education

• Forest and Tribal Rights

• Policy/ Action so far

• Poverty and inequality

• Hunger Overview

• Malnutrition

• HDI Overview

• Education  

• Public Health

• Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDMS)

• PDS/ Ration/ Food Security  

• MDGs

• Water and Sanitation

• Impact on Agriculture

• Time Bomb Ticking

• Social Justice

• Access to Justice

• Human Rights

• Corruption

• General Insecurity

• Disaster & Relief

Hunger stalks temple town of Varanasi-Virendra Nath Bhatt

hat the children died of tuberculosis, human rights' activists allege that the deaths were due to hunger and malnutrition  Two children from a poor family of weavers have allegedly died of Starvation in Varanasi. Four-year old Mohammed Murtaza died on 9 May, while his sister Shamim Parveen (14) died the next day in the Bajardiha locality of Varanasi. Their father, Abdul Khaliq died 10 months ago of malnutrition. He was unable to pay bills f

Kalahandi: from hunger deaths to a rice revolution -Chetan Chauhan

-The Hindustan Times Odisha's Kalahandi district - once the cause of global embarrassment for India due to its high number of Starvation deaths - today stands tall with a five-fold increase in its rice production since 1999, figures reveal. The agriculture ministry's recent crop data ranks Kalahandi among the top 25 rice producing districts of India. The three-year average of its rice production ending 2010-11 was 468,000 tonnes, compare

Cash transfers are bad for food security-Madhavi Cherian

ia's past. Since the 1950s, India has made major strides in agricultural production as evidenced by the large government-held stocks of wheat and rice. However, problems of inadequate nutrition, Starvation and double digit food price inflation remain. Strengthening of the PDS, as seen in Chhattisgarh and Tamil Nadu, would serve the purpose of ensuring food security for the nation through stabilising prices, production and consumption. As seen in

Between mass hunger and bursting granaries-Agrima Bhasin

vil writ petition filed in the Supreme Court by the People's Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), Rajasthan, demanding that the country's rotting foodgrain stocks be used to prevent mass hunger and acute Starvation. The petition emphasised the constitutional basis of the "right to food" flowing from Article 21 that guarantees the fundamental right to life. This petition, also known as the landmark PUCL vs. Union of India or the "right to fo

Crumbs on the plate -Harsh Mander

Guarantees should also include pulses and oilseeds. But for me, the greatest failing of the latest version of the Bill is that it has erased all protections for those who are most vulnerable to Starvation. Any food rights law must first protect those who are most gravely denied food. But it is precisely provisions for these ‘last persons' who have been eliminated in the final stages of the Bill: the right of children who are out of sc

India Jobs Program Scam Pays Wages to Dead Workers -Andrew MacAskill, Unni Krishnan & Tushar Dhara

included efforts to improve financial audits at state and federal levels and the establishment of so-called social audit units to help village officials collect, verify and air claims of graft. Starvation Buffer The program is meant to be a buffer against Starvation and improve rural livelihoods and public infrastructure in a nation where 824 million people live on less than $2 per day, according

Right to Food Campaign rejects the National Food Security Bill cleared by the Cabinet

S, in Take Home Rations in particular. Also the effort to provide local food through Self Help Groups etc also finishes. NOT EVEN FOR THE DESTITUTES The complete omission of community kitchens, Starvation protocol and other support to vulnerable and destitute shows the complete lack of commitment of the Government towards the poorest who need the cheap food most. OTHER ISSUES Grievance redressal continues to begin at the district level wh

Abandoning the Right to Food-Ankita Aggarwal and Harsh Mander

ed food rations under the public distribution system (PDS). This draft contained many robust guarantees for ensuring nutrition of vulnerable groups such as children, women and people in conditions of Starvation, homelessness, emergency or disaster. But these provisions were curtailed in a weakened bill introduced by the government in Parliament in December 2011. The following month, this bill (henceforth referred to as the government draft of the bill

From Bengal Famine to Right to Food-MS Swaminathan

fference of the then U.K. government to the plight of the starving people of undivided Bengal. Famines were frequent in colonial India and some estimates indicate that 30 to 40 million died out of Starvation in Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Bengal during the later half of the 19th century. This led to the formulation of elaborate Famine Codes by the then colonial government, indicating the relief measures that should be put in place when crops fail. The

Cash Transfer or Congress Calling Card!-Ashwani Kumar

aking these entitlements universal so as to not exclude the poor and needy.   Civil society critics argue justifiably that direct cash transfer will lead to accentuation of poverty and Starvations as cash transfers are not indexed to inflation and also they may be used as excuse to reduce welfare subsidies in the name of “good economics”!  In a highly patriarchal society like ours, exemplified by tragic Delhi rape, the