Food inflation rose to 16.55% for the week ended May 22 on account of high prices of pulses, fruits and vegetables. Inflation increased by 0.32 percentage point from 16.23% in the previous week. The uptick was mainly due to a 7% increase in fish marine prices, 5% rise in prices of PoUltry chicken, 2% in prices of barley and masur each and one% increase in prices for fruits and vegetables....

Not so long ago, the prospect of a global sugar shortage gave food manufacturers a panic attack. Poor weather conditions hitting crops in the world's two biggest sugar-producing nations, Brazil and India, sent the price of the sweet stuff soaring on international markets. In August last year, US firms such as Kraft Food, General Mills and chocolate-maker Hershey were so worried that they wrote a joint letter to the country's...

The suburb of Govandi in Mumbai is home to the Indian city's only rubbish dump. On any given day children work and play here, seemingly unaware of the scorching sun and the stench from the waste heaps. Among them are probably some of the 8 million children still out of school across India. Few people notice their presence. But in Govandi alone, more than 1,500 children are thought to be...

"We live on a day-to-day basis," Suraj says, as the faint sound of hammering echoes across the village. "What we earn is what we spend on our families in a day." In Ganne, just off the main road about an hour south of the city of Allahabad, this is a simple fact of life. It is home to members of a poor tribal community, who live in small huts clustered around...

As the nation debates the National Food Security Act (NFSA) and its implications on food security for the country, it is pertinent to pause for a moment and ponder some of the structural reasons for the mismanagement of the food economy of the country. Forget the past or the future or even the present set of policies being pursued. The UPA-II is pushing the nation inexorably towards a regime of...