The crux of the problem is not leakages, but unsold stocks. The debate on the public distribution system is being increasingly overwhelmed by the issue of corruption. The pressures on the system are seen primarily, if not entirely, as one of leakages. This preoccupation with leakages has reached a point where the government appears set to throw up its hands and just hand over cash to families, irrespective of whether they...

Farmers unable to bear the costs of agricultural inputs: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Charging the Trinamool Congress-led government with failing to admit the prevalence of farmers' suicides in the State, Prakash Karat, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) said here on Sunday that such suicides were “not seen or heard of” when the Left Front was in power for 34 years.  “The government is not ready to accept that the farmers...

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) on Friday signalled its intent to deregulate the sugar industry, a move that could potentially stoke a political backlash, especially at a time when states like Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand—all sugarcane-growing regions—are in the middle of an election campaign. The opposition claimed that not only was it anti-farmer, it also violated the electoral code of conduct prevalent in five states, while sugar stocks of...

In U.P., where 70 per cent of the people depend on agriculture, FDI in retail does not produce any cheer. ON a misty Monday morning in early December in Muradnagar, a small town in western Uttar Pradesh, numerous tractors and trucks, loaded with jaggery and driven by farmers themselves, lined up in front of the smallest grain mandi (market) of the region. With unusual patience, the drivers waited for their...

-The Hindu   The Central Government is trying to put in place a system which will not only ensure minimum support price to tribal produce but also get maximum remunerative price. Informing this to media persons here on Sunday, Union Minister for Tribal Welfare and Panchayati Raj V. Kishore Chandra Deo said that he was working on a policy paper on minor forest produce in this regard. “All the states are stakeholders. We...