What's New

We are very pleased to announce the launch of the India Food Security Portal.

India’s monsoon season is off to its weakest start in five years, sparking fears over the potential for drought and increased food prices throughout the country. During the first half of June, cumulative rainfall for India as a whole was 45 percent below average, according to the Ministry of Agriculture’s Department of Agriculture and Cooperation ; India’s Meteorological Department is predicting that total monsoons this season will reach only 93 percent of the long period average.

Food price volatility can present problems for an array of stakeholders, including countries managing their export portfolios, commodity traders, and especially farmers, as unpredictable prices may result in variable income and food insecurity.

Quality healthcare plays a crucial role in improving the lives of the poor. In many developing countries, however, high-quality healthcare can be hard to come by.

This is particularly true in India, where public sector medical care is often plagued with high rates of absenteeism and where private sector care is costly and of low quality. As a result, the country’s poor populations tend to have a low opinion of medical professionals, leading them to consult unqualified practitioners, or even no one at all, when they are sick.

Use, control, and ownership of productive assets – land, money, livestock, and education, to name just a few – are essential stepping stones on the path out of poverty. But this pathway can look very different depending on whether you are a man or a woman. Growing evidence suggests that women typically have fewer assets than men, and that they use those assets differently. What’s more, agricultural development programs may impact men’s and women’s assets in different, sometimes unexpected, ways.