From the time a farmer in India harvests his produce to the time it lands on your plate, farm products go through several layers of middlemen, wholesalers, cold chains and other intermediaries, which push its price up by many notches. The end result: growers get paid less and consumers pay more. The stranglehold that the government has over agriculture produce marketing in India has given rise to abject inefficiencies, lack...

A parliamentary committee has asked the government to consider incentivising private players to set up grain storage facilities as it prepares to implement the right to food. The government will require around 620 lakh tonnes of foodgrain annually to implement the food security law. The official procurement stood at 539.75 lakh tonnes in the recent marketing year. “(The) government should provide soft loans at affordable rates and subsidies to private players to...

He came, he spoke, and he got 54,000 jobs. This was on Day One of his India visit. By the time he flies out of New Delhi on November 9, US President Barack Obama would have charmed his way through to force open Indian agriculture to American corporations . And therein hangs the fate of millions of small and marginal farmers. Top on the agenda is the push to make Prime...

The new consumer price indices set to debut in January will be compilations of indices for states that reflect the price trends prevailing in the country accurately, helping policy formulation and targeted intervention. Each state will have two consumer price indices, one for rural and another for urban areas. These CPI rural and urban will be added up to arrive at urban and rural retail indices at the national level. These...

'The creaky PDS will not be able to do the job.'  The recommendations of the National Advisory Council for the National Food Security Act, made after much discussion and many revisions, cast the net wide to include 75 per cent of the country’s population within the purview of the scheme.It is the most ambitious  food entitlement scheme conceived anywhere in the world and the conceptual and implementation problems are very daunting....