The department of food and public distribution has rejected both proposals of the National Advisory Council (NAC) to provide food security, saying the government risked running up against supply constraints and taking on an unsustainable fiscal burden. The rejection by the ministry of consumer affairs, food and public distribution means that both NAC, headed by Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, and the government will have to go back to the drawing board...

Natural disasters, conflict and weak institutions have thrust 22 countries into recurring food crises and high prevalence of hunger, two United Nations agencies said today in a report on food insecurity around the world, calling for longer-term solutions to help those States recover their productive capacity. Chronic hunger and food insecurity is the most common characteristic of a protracted crisis, according to the report, the “State of Food Insecurity in the...

Ample monsoon rains and higher prices of farm goods are likely to lift Indian fertiliser demand in 2010/11 by 13 percent to a record 60 million tonnes, testing local fertiliser makers' ability to raise output in sync with the demand, industry officials said. India's June-Sept monsoon rains, a key factor in determining food grain production and fertiliser demand in the country, were 2 percent above normal in the current year, weather office data showed....

India will soon be the first country in the world “to enact a food security entitlement act under which every family below the poverty line will get 35 kg of grain”, says M.S. Swaminathan who is in Canada to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta. One of the pioneers of the Green Revolution in India, Swaminathan said India cannot depend on volatile global markets to ensure its food security and...

Physical access to schooling and socio-cultural difference between children from scheduled tribes and children from the mainstream are factors responsible for tribal children being deprived of basic education, and the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, will not necessarily help the tribal population of the country, reveals a recent study. A study, carried out by S N Tripathi of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics...