-Newsclick.in It is beyond belief and understanding why the government is refusing to distribute the mountain of food grain stocks sitting in its warehouses. India produced a record cereal harvest of nearly 273 million tonnes in 2019-20, a jump of 10 million tonnes over the preceding year. While rice production increased marginally, both wheat and coarse grains showed notable increases. Besides these, the production of pulses increased by nearly a million tonnes...

-The Indian Express India should not allow one emergency — the pandemic — to turn into another. Food security problems are not abating and there are clear steps that should be taken before it is too late. In the early days of India’s lockdown, stories of food insecurity were rampant. As “Unlock 2.0” progresses, many analysts hope that labour markets will provide the much needed economic resources to the vulnerable. But amidst...

-TheWire.in The decision, which has been severely criticised as it comes in the wake of rising hunger in the country, was defended by the government as being needed to manufacture alcohol-based hand sanitisers. New Delhi: A high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 3, 2020 all but cleared the way for the government’s much-criticised decision to convert ‘surplus’ rice to ethanol, information obtained by The Wire via the Right...

-The Indian Express For July 1, the normative minimum stocks to run the targeted public distribution system (TPDS) and other welfare schemes, plus maintain a strategic reserve over and above that, are 27.58 mt of wheat and 13.54 mt of rice. Despite efforts at disposing of surplus foodgrains – including by distributing these free under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) and a special scheme for migrant labourers returning to...

-The Hindu There is a resonance between Saramago’s literary world and the migrant labour distress in contemporary India The novel, Blindness, by Portuguese Nobel Laureate José Saramago, is strikingly prescient about a sweeping illness. The plot revolves around a mysterious epidemic because of which people suddenly turn blind. The thread It starts with a person driving his car who turns blind while waiting at a traffic signal. He pleads to be taken home and...