India has long been simultaneously a country of enormous wealth and desperate poverty. In recent decades, the distance has only grown between those who enjoy living standards comparable to the finest in the world, and the millions left far behind. Even as Indians crowd the lists of the world’s richest dollar billionaires, an estimated 200 million people sleep hungry. Half our children are malnourished and nearly a fifth severely so....

Food inflation will defy government policies to remain in high single-digit levels in the long run, unless there is a change in an overwhelming bias among farmers towards staples such as wheat and rice, say economists and policymakers. A steady growth in population and rapidly rising income levels are adding to inflationary pressure at a time when agricultural productivity is showing a decline. A major reason is that the agriculture...

To avoid a big burden on the exchequer from the proposed food security law, the Planning Commission will propose some key changes to the plan, including a virtual abandonment of the concept of universal public distribution system (PDS) endorsed by the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC). Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia in a presentation to Gandhi later this week would suggest that under the proposed scheme, grain be...

Seeking to pressurise the central government further on the issue of rotting food grains, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday, Sep 18 urged the farmers to unite and corner the Congress-led UPA. The saffron party held a dharna in the national capital demanding better storage facilities, and minimum support price for farmers' produce. Speaking to the famers who gathered at the dharna, senior BJP leader Rajnath Singh said, "There is an...

An Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is likely to revise the issue price of levy sugar for the public distribution system (PDS). The group is going to meet on Thursday with a three-point agenda for discussion. The government had recently increased the price of levy sugar for mills, which is meant for PDS, to an average of Rs 17.57 per kg for the 2009-10 crop...