-The New Indian Express As for our media, it’s more interested in a Bihar-born actor, his girlfriend and her brother. So India is in the ‘serious’ category on the Global Hunger Index. No surprises there. There’s dismal relief only in the fact that 94th out of 107 countries is a notch better than previous years—a slow, dispiriting crawl, and below our entire neighbourhood. Bangladesh, Myanmar and Pakistan, though also in GHI 2020’s...

-Business Standard Government officials have claimed that Aadhaar has helped save over Rs 90,000 crore by weeding out fake beneficiaries New Delhi: The Finance Ministry and other government departments have told a Right to Information applicant they do not have information on rules or procedures to identify beneficiaries of state-sponsored subsidies under the Aadhaar Act. Business Standard assessed the government's responses to the RTI application filed by Dr Anupam Saraph, who is based...

-The Indian Express The gap between the current and year-ago stocks, too, has narrowed down from over 15 mt to 1.5 mt between June 1 and October 1. Covid-19 may have unleashed all-round economic devastation, but has also turned into an opportunity for whittling down the Food Corporation of India’s (FCI) massive grain mountain. At 68.49 million tonnes (mt), the total wheat and rice stocks in the Central pool as on October 1...

-Centre for Science and Environment * Niti Aayog vice chairperson Rajiv Kumar releases the report, which provides the real picture of organic farming in India: only 2 per cent of India’s net sown area organically farmed, and a mere 1.3 per cent of farmers registered to do organic farming * Organic and natural farming must be upscaled to make Indian agriculture sustainable, says the report * Needs to be turned into a mass...

-The Indian Express Given this uncertainty over the reach of PM-KISAN and its targeting, the relevance of the scheme needs to be carefully evaluated during this period. The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) is the first universal basic income-type of scheme Targeted towards landed farmers. It was introduced in December 2018 to manage agricultural stress. Initially, the scheme was Targeted at small and medium landed farmers, but with the declining growth...