-The Financial Express From allocating extra foodgrains to states as a means to fight the price rise to setting up a high-level committee to recommend measures for restructuring the Food Corporation of India (FCI), the government has taken various steps for cutting down food subsidy and curbing further spike in agricultural commodity prices. From allocating extra foodgrains to states as a means to fight the price rise to setting up a high-level...

-India Today Geography of rice and wheat has been transformed with Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh generating surpluses Almost 50 years ago, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri went on air to appeal to Indians to skip a meal a day. Foodgrain supplies had come under strain after the 1965 drought, and the patriotic ethos cautioned against over-consumption: what you ate left that much less for the rest. Today, it is...

-New York Times News Service SHEOHAR (Bihar): He wore thick black eyeliner to ward off the evil eye, but Vivek, a tiny 1-year-old living in a village of mud huts and diminutive people, had nonetheless fallen victim to India's great scourge of malnutrition. His parents seemed to be doing all the right things. His mother still breast-fed him. His family had six goats, access to fresh buffalo milk and a hut filled...

-Press Information Bureau/ Ministry of Finance The Economic Survey 2013-14 released in New Delhi today has highlighted several challenges and reforms required in the agriculture sector. The Economic Survey states that as a concomitant of growth, the share of agriculture and allied sector in gross domestic product (GDP) declined to 15.2% during the Eleventh Plan and further to 13.9% in 2013-14 (provisional estimates-PE). While it still accounts for about 54.6% of...

-The Indian Express Modi government's potato policy will prove counter-productive. Onions and potatoes take centre-stage again. Having secured a mandate based on people's unhappiness with continuously high and painful food inflation, the government's inability to control prices is, understandably, sending shivers down the BJP's spine. Fulfilling the aspirations of urban voters and winning over a thoroughly exacting Delhi electorate, where re-elections are due, are essential to the BJP's game plan to succeed....