The state government will open 583 foodgrain banks at villages across Jharkhand and provide grains to every below poverty line (BPL) family immediately. Food and civil supplies minister Mathura Prasad Mahto said this today after a review of the district under North Chotanagpur commissionerate, where he instructed officials to check hoarders and prevent hunger deaths by supplying foodgrain free of cost to the poor. The minister said the government had also decided...

Tipped as the flagship programme of the second United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, the proposed Food Security Bill is ready, union minister K.V. Thomas said Saturday. Thomas, who recently was given independent charge of the consumer affairs, food and public distribution ministry, told reporters here that his department was ready with the path-breaking Food Security Bill. 'Early next month, it will be taken up for discussion by the National Advisory Committee and...

The countrywide share of corporate retail in food distribution tripled in the past four years when retail food prices showed the greatest increase. THE dramatic increase in food inflation over the past two years has been associated with several surprises. One major surprise has been how the top economic policymakers in the country have responded to it. The initial response was one of apparent disbelief, followed very quickly by the...

The class bias in government policy is clear in the decision to release a small amount of foodgrain in the open market to tackle inflation. MOST people would agree that there is a strong element of speculation underlying the current inflation and that forward trading contributes to it. Yet the government, though it has banned forward trading in certain commodities under public pressure, is curiously reluctant to see this point....

The Congress-led government in Assam is going into an overdrive before the polls to reach out to all sections of the population. Chief minister Tarun Gogoi today announced his government’s decision to increase the quota of rice from 10kg to 20kg rice per family at the rate of Rs 6 per kg under the Chief Minister’s Anna Suraksha Yojana that was launched late last year. The scheme, being funded from the state’s...