From the Middle East to Madagascar, high prices are spawning land grabs and ousting dictators. Welcome to the 21st-century food wars. In the United States, when world wheat prices rise by 75 percent, as they have over the last year, it means the difference between a $2 loaf of bread and a loaf costing maybe $2.10. If, however, you live in New Delhi, those skyrocketing costs really matter: A doubling in...

There is nothing wrong in having advisory groups. But there is a problem when groups not constituted legally cross the line of demands, advice and rights-based, democratic agitation. The 1990s saw marketing whiz kids at the largest English daily in the world steal a term then in vogue among sexually discriminated minorities: PLUs — or People Like Us. Media content would henceforth be for People Like Us. This served advertisers' needs...

The World Bank and a pliant UPA Government plan to do away with India's public distribution system and shut down four lakh ration shops. The excuse-the Public Distribution System (PDS) spends Rs 45,000 crore every year to supply BPL families wheat, rice, kerosene and sugar of which 60 per cent of grain is looted by the food mafia. The 412page 'World Bank Report: Social Protection for Changing India', released on...

The Government proposal to make cash transfer in place of food grain to poor families has drawn mixed reactions. Raghuvir Nagar on the western outskirts of Delhi has of late turned into a turf for a war between two schools of thought. The war has not been limited to campaigns and debates and purportedly escalated to the level of allegations, even intimidation, so much so that the Government of the national...

-Reuters   The world's trading nations are succumbing to protectionism in the wake of the global financial crisis, limiting exports of food and raw materials and installing new import barriers, the WTO warned on Friday. Commodities export restrictions from Indian cotton and Ukrainian wheat to Chinese rare earths and coal are "not without hazards", the World Trade Organization said in the report that assesses the protectionist behaviour of more than 180 nations. The...