-Business Standard The Shanta Kumar Committee on restructuring FCI has suggested the reach of the National Food Security Act be curtailed to 40 per cent of the population The National Democratic Alliance government set up the high-level Shanta Kumar Committee to restructure and reform the state-owned Food Corporation of India. Instead, the panel ended up providing a road map to restructure the entire farming and food security policy of the government. In...
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Draft guidelines issued for onion, potato price stabilisation fund
-Business Standard The central government's price stabilisation fund for potatoes and onions proposes to take on only half of any losses incurred by agencies of state governments in this regard, such as civil supply corporations. The draft guidelines for the Fund, creation of which was announced in the 2014-15 Budget by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, say if any central government agency (such as Nafed or SFAC, the Small Farmers Agri-Business Consortium)...
More »Revamping Food Corp: Panel wants Food Security Act changed but will BJP bite the bullet? -Seetha
-FirstPost.com In 2001, the Hyderabad-based Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) was asked by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government to study the costs of acquisition and distribution of food grains by the Food Corporation of India (FCI). After making a slew of suggestions, the report's author Gautam Pingle said the report was not making recommendations on "the more serious issue - of food grain policy" because it was beyond its scope....
More »Reduce food security benefits from 67% to 40% population, says panel on restructuring FCI -Jitendra
-Down to Earth Shanta Kumar committee report recommends privatisation, outsourcing and cash benefit transfer to cut food procurement and distribution costs The high level committee set up to look into the restructuring of Food Corporation of India has recommended reducing the number of beneficiaries under the Food Security Act-from the current 67 per cent to 40 per cent. It has also recommended allowing private players to procure and store food grains, stopping...
More »Farmers’ Suicides and Fatal Politics -Vasanthi Srinivasan
-Kafila.org With depressing regularity, the newspapers have been reporting farmers' suicides in many states. Recently, P Sainath wrote on BBC that around 296,438 farmers have committed suicide since 1995. He also mentions that cash crop cultivators of cotton, sugar cane, vanilla, pepper, groundnut etc account for the bulk of those suicides. According to a PIL heard by the Supreme Court in December 2014, around 3146 farmers in Maharashtra have committed suicide...
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