Giving right to food is not enough to deliver food, say speakers at a conference on food security Agriculture scientist M S Swaminathan has called for setting up a body headed by the prime minister for effective execution of the National Food Security Bill (NFSB) once it is enacted. All chief ministers should be members of this board, he added. NFSB was cleared by the Union Cabinet and introduced in Parliament in...

Eminent journalist Dileep Padgaonkar who headed the group of three Central interlocutors for Jammu and Kashmir said on Thursday that the thrust of their report was to empower the people of Jammu and Kashmir so that they were able to exercise their civil and political rights in full measure. The 176-page report of the group of Central interlocutors was uploaded on the website of Union Home Ministry on Thursday, seven months...

-Live Mint After a record harvest of 90.23 mt this year, the govt’s wheat stocks were at 38.2 mt as of 1 May Worry lines run deep on the faces of wheat farmers in Sehrala in Haryana as falling prices, higher input costs and poor infrastructure erode earnings and cast doubt over not just their next crop, but their future in agriculture as well. Agents in the grain market of Ballabgarh said spot...

Forty-eight thousand farmers, members of twelve hundred co-operative credit societies in Kolhapur district, are up in arms against the National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) which has asked the Kolhapur district central co-operative bank (KDCC) to recover loans that have already been waived under the union government’s loan waiver scheme four years ago. In a rally held on Saturday, the farmers decided to resort to a massive agitation against...

-The Telegraph Vice-President and Rajya Sabha chairman Hamid Ansari has suggested that meetings of parliamentary standing committees should be open to public or televised live, as in many western democracies. Such panels do “excellent work” but remain unsung, Ansari said as he made the proposal at a two-day orientation programme for new entrants to the Rajya Sabha that began yesterday. He said he had discussed the issue with MPs. But some of the...