The wheel has turned a full circle. India, which was synonymous with hunger and malnutrition in the West, is now being called upon to export from its pile of food grain to ease the shortfall in overseas markets. French Food, Agriculture & Fisheries Minister Bruno Le Maire broached the issue during a meeting with KV Thomas, India's minister of state for food and agriculture, last week. The issue is expected to be...

"To implement the NAC's two proposals, the grain requirement is estimated to be over 70 million tonnes. We have shared that any requirement of the grain over 55 million tonnes would be difficult to meet," an official source said. The latest challenge to the proposed food security law has come from the government’s procurement agencies as the Food Ministry procures only 55 million tonnes of foodgrains a year against the 70...

India has been ranked 67, way below neighbouring countries like China and Pakistan, in a new global hunger index by the International Food Policy Research Institute. The index, released on Monday, rated 84 countries on the basis of three leading indicators -- prevalence of child malnutrition, rate of child mortality, and the proportion of people who are calorie deficient. China is rated much ahead of India at the ninth place, while Pakistan...

We need spectacle in the capital, not mundane things like schools and hospitals in villages In the final years of the Roman Republic, the Senate kept the masses happy by distributing cheap food and staging big spectacles known as the circus games to get votes. In his satires, the Roman poet Juvenal observed witheringly that governance had been reduced to panem et circenses (bread and circus/games). He was referring to the...

Global steel giants ArcelorMittal (MT) and Posco are leading $80 billion in planned spending in India, an investment that would vault the country ahead of Japan as the second-biggest steelmaker. There's one hurdle: India's farmers and their water supply. The farmers refuse to move from irrigated land in three states that hold more than half of India's reserves of iron ore, a key material used in the making of steel....