Farmers are improving crop yields, using new technologies besides learning video-making skills — thanks to Digital Green which is catalysing a quiet revolution in the little hamlets of India. Delhi-based Digital Green focusses on educating farmers about farming techniques through locally produced videos in which local cultivators are featured. The project works in over 200 villages across Jharkhand, Orissa, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh with seven NGOs, helping famers improve their...

Television and print media have been awash with pictures of stacks of sacks of rotting foodgrain. And played in an almost infinite loop, these pictures become obviously powerful. They can become a call to urgent and revolutionary action. This perhaps accounts for the emotive appeal of the Supreme Court’s recent intervention on distributing this grain, and to keep procurement commensurate with available storage facilities. It does not, however, explain the...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday virtually ticked off the Supreme Court, saying that it "should not get into policy formation". The trigger for this rebuke was the apex court's anger at grains rotting in FCI and government godowns, and its direction to agriculture minister Sharad Pawar to distribute grains for free to families living below the poverty line. Talking to a group of editors on Monday morning, Singh said...

Kaushik Basu proposes a new framework for release of foodgrains from government warehouses. Last year, official food inflation peaked at 21.05 per cent for the week ended November 28. Since then, it has eased — though the year-on-year rise of 10.86 per cent for August 21 is still in double-digit territory. Moreover, in absolute terms, the ‘food articles' index for the latest recorded week, at 303.3, is higher than the 296.1 level...

The Union Food Ministry today told the Supreme Court that its suggestion on limiting food procurement to available storage facilities, if put to action, would hit the poor farmer and “drastically impact food security of the nation”. In a 19-page affidavit, C Vishwanath, joint secretary in the Ministry, said: “If Food Corporation of India (FCI) and state government agencies that do the work of procurement were to limit procurement only to...