EVERY OTHER day there is either a newspaper report or an editorial comment lamenting the loss of food grain stored in buffer stocks. Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, while prophesying a bumper kharif crop, admits he is worried about not having adequate storage for the produce. At a national conference in 2003, the Central Warehousing Corporation said it had covered storage capacity for 48 million tonnes of food grain. In 2002,...
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Rich households outnumber low income families: NCAER
The growing economy has spun a wheel of fortune for Indians, with high income households outnumbering those in the low category for the first time at the end of 2009-10, according to estimates made by think-tank NCAER. India has 46.7 million high income households as compared to 41 million in the low income category, the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) estimates on Earnings and Spendings have revealed. "For the first...
More »'Why not abolish PDS for APL families?' by Dhananjay Mahapatra
In what could put the government on a politically difficult turf, the Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Centre to answer within two weeks why cheap ration under public distribution system (PDS) to above poverty line card holders should not be abolished and the BPL category enlarged. Under the targetted PDS (TPDS), wheat and rice are available at cheap rates to one crore poorest of the poor families (Antyoday Anna...
More »The banking woes of an “excluded” community by Vidya Subrahmaniam
Banks have designated red zones where the vast majority of Muslim clusters fall. This fact is confirmed by the rash of banking-related complaints received by the National Commission for Minorities. A little over a year ago, Ali Arshad, a resident of Okhla in Delhi, went to a well-known private sector bank to open a bank account. He thought his case would be fast-tracked because he had a banking background, he worked...
More »Detracting from entitlements by Brinda Karat
The National Advisory Council's proposals on the Food Security Bill represent a bad deal for the poor. The struggle for an effective and equitable Food Security Bill (FSB) has received a setback with the disappointing proposals put forward by the National Advisory Council. There is a disturbing disjuncture between what is being claimed and the actual implications of the proposals. Indeed it may be said that the NAC proposals create new...
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