The proposed Food Security Act has the potential to stoke global food prices and significantly increase the country's food subsidy bill, officials and experts say. The government plans to introduce a legislation which aims to ensure food security for 75% of the rural households and 50% of the urban areas and includes both below poverty line and above poverty line families. Experts say that in case there is a drought in future...

Less than a week after India announced a record harvest, Hindustan Times has learnt that the nation’s main grain-buying agency is running out of money for its massive nationwide purchase operation. Over the last month, the state-run Food Corporation of India (FCI) has twice stopped payments to state governments, various grain-purchasing agencies and rice millers who buy wheat and rice, the main food crops, from millions of farmers, a senior...

The empowered group of ministers (eGoM) recently decided on two important steps seen crucial for management of foodgrains. The first was the finalization of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) and, secondly, extending the term of the Nandan Nilekani committee to explore the possibility of introducing cash transfers for delivering food subsidy directly to the poor. Another linked decision was to allow exports of wheat and rice to international markets. The...

-The Times of India   The government is set to accept the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council's recommendation to cover 75% rural and 50% urban population under a food security law, but wants to keep the percentages outside the language of the Act itself. UPA-2 is inclined to set the percentage of population covered in a notification or schedule accompanying the Act so that it can be revised by executive order...

The food ministry seems to have given up the hope of seeing the Food Security Bill passed into a law this financial year. But the delay in the rollout of one of the government's most ambitious welfare schemes will surely bring joy to mandarins at the North Block , who have been battling to rein in the government's expenditure. The food security law, which envisages subsidized grains for at least...