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N R Narayana Murthy of INFOSYS blamed p oor public governance for major ills faced by the country such as illiteracy, malnourishment, lack of sanitation facilities and dismal food and power management.
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| ‘Even 63 years after independence, 35 crore Indians can’t read and write, and the country has the largest mass (46%) of malnourished children. Twenty-five crore people do not have access to safe drinking water, while 75 crore have no access to sanitation facilities and 35% of total production grains are allowed to rot.’ |
India has an installed electricity generation capacity of 145 gigawatts but only 84 gigawatts are available, which is “sadly a shame”.
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“Lot of it is due to poor (public) governance. There is no doubt about it”, Murthy said. “Unfortunately, whatever, our public governance is in charge of....whatever our public governance has touched...has not made as good a progress as that happened in a significant percentage of private governance”.
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This country requires discipline like no other country. We are like this because we are not a disciplined set of people. And that discipline has to start right in classrooms," Murthy said. Press Trust of India 060910
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India is home to one-third of the world's undernourished children
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In 1992-3, 52 per cent of infants in India under the age of three were underweight. In 2005-6, the corresponding figure was 46 per cent, according to National Family Health Survey data.
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| From 1993 to 2006, the GDP per capita went up by 53 per cent while malnutrition among children went down by only 12.5 per cent, when international comparisons suggest the decline should be closer to 30 per cent. |
In the last 25 years, India's real GDP per capita grew impressively, at 3.95 per cent a year from 1980 to 2005 and at 5.4 per cent a year from 2000 to 2005.
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It is because it is a rather toxic mix of incentives that prioritise the delivery of social inputs over outputs and practices that exclude large groups of individuals, including women and girls, from access to quality services. India is an economic powerhouse but a nutritional weakling, says economist BL 030910
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More people should be moved from agriculture, India has no option but to industrialise : PM
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| About two Indias, P M agreed with the description and said this was because of the per capita income in agriculture was much lower than that in the industrial sector. With agricultural growth rate barely exceeding 2.5 per cent per year in the last 10 years, the average per capita growth of income for the farm households is just above 1 per cent. The gap, he added, could only be bridged if more people moved from agriculture to industry. India has no option but to industrialise. |
| His government was committed to ensuring that food was available to the poor at an affordable price. “But to say that we can give foodgrains free, quite frankly, if we do that on a large scale you would destroy the incentive of our farmers to produce more food and if there is no food available for distribution what will you distribute?” PM- The Hindu 060910 |
| Food production lagging behind population growth |
The average growth rate of food production at 1.6 per cent during 1990-2010 lagged behind the average population growth of 1.9 per cent. There was a large divergence between Wholesale Price Index-based inflation and Consumer Price Index-based inflation. Also, inflation varied from State to State. RBI A R 2010 .
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| With agricultural growth rate barely exceeding 2.5 per cent per year in the last 10 years, the average per capita growth of income for the farm households is just above 1 per cent. B L 080910 |
| Farm growth profile during last decade |
| According to the official estimates of gross domestic product (GDP), farm sector growth in real terms – i.e. at constant 2004-05 prices – averaged 3.1 per cent during the five years ended 2009-10. During the preceding five-year period ended 2004-05, farm GDP with output per se (at constant prices) correspondingly rising by 1.6 per cent; at current prices rose annually by 4.3 per cent. |
| During 2009-10, the value of manufacturing GDP, at Rs 719,975 crore in 2004-05 prices, exceeded the corresponding figure of Rs 651,901 crore for agriculture, forestry and fishing. However, in absolute current value, it was just the other way – Rs 10,04,594 crore for agriculture versus Rs 931,101 crore for manufacturing. BL 030910 |
Paddy worth over Rs. 6 crore found rotting in mill
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The Cuttack district administration has sealed a rice mill at Tangi and seized paddy worth over Rs. 6 crore that was rotting in the mill for last ten months. According to sources, the paddy was given to the mill by the district civil supplies department in December last for processing and was asked to return the rice after milling by September this year.
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| However, when the district civil supply department officials visited the mill , they found a major quantity of paddy stored in the mill are either destroyed or are sprouted making them unsuitable for human consumption. PTI 060910 |
Govt's foodgrains carrying costs spurt 50%
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| There is a steep increase in the carrying cost of foodgrains in the Central Pool. “The buffer carrying cost of surplus stock held by the FCI is Rs 31.18 a quintal a month. The carrying cost of this surplus stock for a day is around Rs 27 crore This works out to nearly Rs 312 a tonne for a month and over Rs 3,700 a tonne a year. |
| When Business Line enquired with a few private sector food handlers including multinational companies in the grains business, they were unanimous in asserting that their current carrying cost for foodgrains is approximately Rs 180-200 a month for a tonne equivalent to a maximum of Rs 2,400 a tonne a year. |
| It is a great mystery why the FCI should be incurring carrying costs at least 50 per cent more than the private sector does. BL 030910 |
| Supply chain inefficiencies cost $65 Mn. |
| A whopping $65 billion is lost every year on account of the inefficient supply-chain system in India. Since Independence only 20 per cent capacity has been added to the railway network but the traffic has increased ten times. In a sector where margins are wafer-thin, the supply- chain management is a critical enabler to profitabilty and this has to be improved. Supply-chain costs in India are about 12-13 per cent of the GDP as compared to 7-8 per cent in developed countries. Hence, the country loses out arouund $65 billion annually. Report by CII ET 010910 |
Cotton production for the season beginning October is expected to be upwards of 325 lakh bales: The production comes on the heels of the acreage under the fibre hitting a record of over 106 lakh hectares.The production expected for the next season is against 283 lakh bales estimated for this year. The CAB has pegged domestic consumption at 246 lakh bales against 230 lakh bales this year. The estimate of 49.50 lakh bales could be the board's estimate of surplus cotton.Despite the exports and rising domestic demand, the carryover stocks could be higher at 55 lakh bales from the next season.
For every metre increase in per capita cloth consumption, we need 20 lakh additional bales of cotton.BL 310810 |
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