JAYA KUMAR CHRISTIAN: collections

I have seen many visitors in this blog visiting to read on Jaya Kumar Christian. I am a great fan of this wonderful development thinker. I have collected quite a number of his articles which is in pdf format. If you are interested to get one you can simply leave a comment on this write up. I will certainly send one to you free of cost.

UN cuts food aid, as widespread starvation takes hold

By Alex Bell
As millions of Zimbabweans fight a daily battle against hunger, malnutrition and disease, and as the need for humanitarian assistance daily grows, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said this week it has been forced to cut its life-saving food rations.
The UN has predicted that up to 5 million people will face starvation as soon as January, because of widespread food shortages and the devastating effect of the crash of the local currency. The government, in a shocking act of cruelty, only partially lifted a ban on crucial foreign aid recently and the trickle of food aid that has returned to the country means countless numbers of men, women and children have already died from lack of food. The true number of deaths may never be known.
The food crisis is affecting all sectors of life, and even boarding schools across the country have been forced to shut their doors early because there is no food to give students. Schools were scheduled to shut down for the festive season in early December but authorities at some boarding schools last Friday ordered all Form one, two, three and five students out of school, citing the overwhelming food crisis. Only students writing their ‘O’ and ‘A’ level examinations have remained, but it unclear what they are being fed, if they are being fed at all.
The lives of countless more people now hang in the balance after the WFP announced on Tuesday that it is facing a serious funding crisis and it has already been forced to reduce its aid.
“WFP still requires US$140 million to fund its operations in Zimbabwe until the end of March 2009 - with a shortfall of approximately 145,000 tons of food, including 110,000 metric tons of cereals and 35,000 metric tons of other food commodities,” the agency said in an update detailing its first month of large-scale distributions in October.
A WFP spokesman, Richard Lee explained on Wednesday that there is “currently no food in the pipeline for distributions in January and February”, a period when the food crisis is set to reach its peak and when almost half the population will need urgent food assistance. The WFP said it aims in November to distribute around 46,000 tons of food to more than 3.3 million people under the “vulnerable group” feeding programme and around 600,000 under the safety net programmes, but the organisation said it will not be able to provide every beneficiary with a full food basket. The November cereal ration has been cut from 12 kilograms to 10 kilograms per person per month and the pulse ration from 1.8 kilograms to one kilogram for all “vulnerable group” beneficiaries and for people receiving take-home rations under the safety net programmes.
“These cuts will allow WFP to stretch its available resources as far as possible but they will leave greater numbers more malnourished and more susceptible to disease,” Lee explained, saying the group is very concerned by the numbers that will be left hungry. He added that the group is confident it can “reach and provide aid for the predicted numbers of Zimbabweans next year” but said this will depend of receiving sufficient donations to make up the current shortfall.

Worst of Food Crisis Approaching: Going Long In The Midst of Panic Selling

by Jared Irish of Archer Financial Services

The wave of selling fear and forced liquidation has sent grain prices along with everything else plunging to impressive lows. Grains prices as measured by the DJ-AIG sub index are now over 50% off their highs from just a few months ago. At this time most investors are running for the streets in panic calling for all markets to return to prices not seen since the ice age. However, those investors who have the nerve to position themselves over the next couple of months will probably be handsomely rewarded over the next couple of years. It is often said that if you hear a lie enough times, you will eventually believe it. If you watch “Bubble Vision,” everyday you will hear the term “Global Demand Destruction!” People are returning to pre-historic times and will soon live in caves again. They will no longer drive, fly, eat, heat their homes, and use electricity. They are primarily focused on demand here in the United States, and continue to ignore the 685 billion people on the other side of the planet. They fail to realize that demand is merely slowing at a time when production and inventories of most commodities are falling off a cliff. You will continue to hear that the Federal Reserve can bail out institution after institution. They can print trillions and trillions of dollars and they can do all of this without impacting the credit worthiness of the U.S. government and value of the U.S. Dollar. Thanks to the global credit crisis, farmers around the world are having trouble getting the credit they need for next year’s crop. They do not have the financing they need to for the land, fuel, equipment, fertilizer and labor. Furthermore, input costs are still relatively high. Farmers need grain prices to come up just to break even. Marino Colpo, a large soybean producer in Brazil said that they require at least $10.50 soybeans to break even. He also said that production in Brazil is likely to drop this coming season because farmers are unwilling to plant at a loss. Thanks to the plunging grain prices induced by the credit crisis, we will see farmers around the world cutting back on production. This is at a time when global grain inventories are already near historic lows. William Doyle, president of Potash says that even with slowing demand growth they will need to produce record crops just to maintain adequate stocks.Global grain inventories will get tighter as farmers are unable and unwilling to produce grains at a loss. This could eventually send grain prices higher and switch the attention of the mainstream media from the credit crisis to the food crisis and famine. Feel free to contact me for information and research to help you invest in commodity futures and options including the grain markets. I can be reached at 1-877-377-7936 or you can email me at http://www.insidefutures.com/articles/out.php?a=87326&u=http%3A//m3.tradersmedia.com/www/delivery/ck.php%3Fbannerid%3D2834 .

Seasons of Hunger: Forward by Robert Chambers

FOREWORD TO SEASONS OF HUNGER

by Stephen Devereux, Bapu Vaitla and Samuel Hauenstein Swan

foreword by Robert Chambers

Of all the dimensions of rural deprivation, the most neglected is seasonality. Vulnerability, sickness, powerlessness, exploitation, material poverty, under- and malnutrition, wages, prices,
incomes…these are recognised, researched and written about, But among them again and again seasonality is overlooked and left out.

Yet seasonality manifests in all these other dimensions and in how they interlock. This is almost universal for poor people, but especially so in the rural tropics. There, during the rains, poor people are repeatedly oppressed and screwed down by a cruel combination of lack of food, lack of money, high food prices, physical hardship, hard work vital for survival, debilitating sicknesses such as diarrhoeas and malaria, and isolation and lack of access to services. It is then that they are materially most poor, most vulnerable, most powerless, most exploited, most isolated, and most short of food. It is then these dimensions most tightly interlock and reinforce each other. It
is then that poor people suffer most and are most vulnerable to becoming poorer.
It is also when they are most invisible. Integrated seasonal poverty is matched and mirrored by integrated professional ignorance.Professionals anyway focus on their own specialised disciplinary concerns and miss linkages with those of others. This is compounded when all professions overlook seasonality. They do not see the stark and cyclical reality of the seasons when deprivations collide and hit poor people simultaneously. So research, reports and recommendations repeatedly omit the seasonal dimension. Papers published on rural poverty in the tropics often never mention it. I have never once read or heard it in the speech of a policy-maker. It is simply missing from most professionals’ and policy-makers’ mental maps.

The reasons are not far to seek. We development professionals are season-proofed - insulated and protected by our housing, air conditioning, fans and heaters, clothing, urban facilities, incomes, food supplies, protection from infection, and access to health services. Often we gain impressions most from rural elites, but as this book points out, while seasonality is bad for the poor it can be good for the rich. We are also season-blind – we travel least at the bad times during the rains and before the harvest, and when we do, stick more than ever to tarmac and places close to town. Except in full-blown famines, we rarely encounter or perceive the regular seasonal hardship, hunger and starvation of remoter poor people. Cyclical seasonal hunger is quiet and hidden. When the rains are over, the harvest in, and people are through the worst,
urban-based professionals travel again and venture further afield. Their impressions are then formed at the best times, missing the worst.
This book is a powerful corrective. It brings a new perspective and proposals for action that are new in their scope and focus. It shows how central seasonality is to the creation and deepening of
deprivation. The case is made, irrefutably, that seasonal hunger is the father of famine and that famine cannot be stopped unless seasonal hunger is stopped.

What is so shocking is the evidence of how policies have made it worse. In earlier decades, in many countries, with parastatal marketing boards, people in remote areas were entitled and able to buy seed and sell crops at fixed prices which did not vary by season. With enforced liberalisation and the abolition of the boards, the poor people in those areas, and elsewhere, lost that protection and were once again exposed to cruel seasonal fluctuations in prices. The market did not serve them. It exposed them. Liberalisation made poor people poorer, and created conditions for famines in bad years.

The situation cries out for action. Drawing on their experience and research, Devereux, Vaitla and Swan show what has to be done. They bring together proposals for a raft of workable measures for social protection. Agricultural livelihood development is basic. Social protection measures include: nutritional and food security surveillance; community-based management of acute malnutrition, and home-based care; cash and food transfers; seasonal employment programmes; social pensions; child growth promotion; and crop insurance schemes. And these are costed. The question becomes not whether they can be afforded but whether if governments, lenders and donors who are serious about poverty can conceivably not afford them.

To end seasonal hunger, rights and power are crucial. This is shown by India’s employment guarantee schemes. Poor people must have rights to make demands. There must be an enforceable right to food. The persuasive argument put forward is for a “fundamental transformation in the political obligations around hunger”.

This book is a wake up call. After Seasons of Hunger, things should never be the same again. It should be required reading for all development professionals – political leaders, officials, those who work in governments, aid agencies and NGOs, academics, researchers, teachers, local leaders and others –all who are committed to the fight against poverty. For all those who share that commitment, it is a ‘must’. Let us in future always find ‘seasonality’ in books, articles and reports on poverty. In committees, meetings and reviews of policy and practice, and in research, let there always be someone who asks and presses the question: “And what about seasonality?” Let that crucial, pervasive, cross cutting dimension never again be overlooked or ignored. To achieve that, we have to start with ourselves, our own perceptions and priorities. To make poverty history, we have to make seasonal blindness history.
The development community has a huge, historic opportunity. It is precisely because seasonal deprivation has been so neglected that it now presents such immense and wide-ranging scope for attacking poverty. Any development professional serious about poverty has now, more than ever, to be serious about seasonality. May the right to food be recognised. May the measures advocated here be adopted. And so let us banish the hidden obscenity of quiet seasonal starvation from our world and make seasonal hunger history.

Seasons of Hunger shows how.
29 May 2008 Robert Chambers

Drought-like situation in Orissa's Ganjam district

Inadequate rainfall during the kharif season has led to drought-like situation in Orissa's Ganjam district as several thousand hectares of paddy crops experienced moisture stress.
Preliminary reports of the state agriculture department said that moisture stress had been noticed in about 15,036 hectares, mostly cultivated in high land areas.
However, sources claimed that over 50 per cent of crop had already withered due to lack of rain and irrigation facility.
The district experienced less precipitation this year except in August-September. In October there was a meagre 27.40 mm rainfall against 177 mm last year causing moisture stress, official reports said.
Normal rainfall was essential in October for bumper kharif crop.
Last year, there was 1298.19 mm rainfall against noraml rainfall of 1275.29 mm in the district.
Altogether 22.35 lakh hectares had been covered for paddy cultivation in the district and the yield was 7,83,368 metric tonnes.
The department had set the target to produce 7,85,795 metric tonnes of paddy this year, the sources said, adding if the present situation continued for a week more, the yield would drastically reduce.
The blocks facing moisture stress included Rangeilunda, Sanakhemundi, Digapahandi, Kukudakhandi, Bhanjanagar, Chikiti, Patrapur, Ganjam, Chhatrapur, Buguda, Jagannathprasad, Khallikote and Belaguntha.