Drawing on the Millennium Declaration , the UN system, World Bank and OECD drew up a set of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with associated targets and indicators. All 191 United Nations member states have pledged to meet the MDGs by the year 2015. The first Goal is to Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger; its targets are to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day and the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
03-07-2009According to a government panel set up under the chairmanship of N.C. Saxena, 50% of Indians are living below the poverty line. The committee in its draft report has recommended that all such people should be extended the benefits of government’s social sector schemes, including the public distribution system.
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02-07-2009After four years of drought, 5000 farmers in Indian state of Jharkhand have signed a suicide pact. They are complaining that government is not taking any steps to improve their conditions and has in fact turned a blind eye to their plight.
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30-06-2009The proposed Food Security Act in India is flawed, says Brinda Karat, Polit Bureau member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)). She argues the public distribution system should be made universal, as it existed prior to the targeted system introduced in the 1990s as part of the neo-liberal agenda.
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India may receive below normal monsoon this year 25-06-2009India’s Meteorological Department has revised its forecast saying that the country is expected to receive below normal monsoon this year. However, scientists and Planning Commission have allayed the fears of adverse impact on agriculture and economy.
Migrant miseries will trickle down worldwide 02-07-2009There are an estimated 200 million migrant workers today in the world, of which about 150 million are the most vulnerable due to the current global financial crisis, says the UN. Decreasing remittances are affecting not just the living conditions of migrants but also their families back home.
01-07-2009Jiboner Jolchobi, a new television series aired on mainstream channel in Bangladesh, is equipping farmers with useful information and technologies to boost agricultural production. The programme focuses on food processing, savings and credit systems, grassroots services and disaster risk reduction.
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Image: A scene from the serial/ Photo credit: Commodity Online
15-06-2009UNDP-UNEP’s new handbook Mainstreaming poverty-environment linkages into development planning serves as a guide for practitioners engaged in the task of mainstreaming poverty-environment linkages into national development planning. The document lays out a programmatic approach to a flexible model that can be adapted to national circumstances.
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Image: Cover page of the report/ Photo credit: UNPEI
