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...
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Number of hungry people in the world drops for the first time in 15 years: FAO by Amulya Nagaraj
The number of hungry people in the world dropped about 10 percent for the first time in 15 years to below 1 billion but the figure is still "unacceptable," the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a report. According to a report titled "The State of Food Insecurity in the World," which will be jointly published by FAO and World Food Program (WFP) in October, about 925 million people...
More »Distribute, procure, store and sow by MS Swaminathan
The goal of food for all can be achieved only through sustained efforts in producing, saving and sharing foodgrains. The Supreme Court of India has rendered great service by arousing public, professional and political concern about the co-existence of rotting grain mountains and mounting hungry mouths. In several African countries hunger is increasing because food is either not available in the market, or is too expensive for the poor. Food inflation...
More »‘Dependence on bureaucracy is why the poor remain poor’
Once, during a tour of his constituency in Tamil Nadu, Member of Parliament and former Panchayati Raj minister Mani Shankar Aiyar came across an eight-year-old boy. A chance meeting that he says threw light on why India stagnates at the 134th position in the United Nations Human Development Index. The boy, Aiyar said during a brief pause in his United Nations Millennium lecture at the British Council on Sunday, had got...
More »Govt expects record wheat crop
The central government said on Friday it expects this year’s wheat output to total a record 82 million tonnes as the country grapples with a grain storage problem. India produced a record 80.71 million tonnes of wheat in the 2009-10 crop year, which runs from July to June, despite the worst drought in nearly four decades. “If there is no terminal heat this year, output is expected to be 82 million tonnes,”...
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