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,...

To unlock the lifesaving potential of breast milk, two United Nations agencies have unveiled 10 steps to help mothers successfully breast feed, kicking off World Breastfeeding Week today. According to the UN World Health Organization (WHO), breast milk is the ideal food for newborns and infants because it is safe and gives them the nutrients necessary for healthy development. It also contains antibodies to protect infants from common childhood illnesses. Although exclusive...

The National Advisory Council, led by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, has come up with the muchawaited contours of the National Food Security Act. The NFSA, it is hoped, will become India’s flagship programme for tackling hunger and Malnutrition, equal in scale and vision to the ambitious and highly successful Fome Zero Programme launched by President Lula Da Silva in Brazil. The UPA government is also hoping that the NFSA will...

Even as India once more self-declares its “arrival on the world stage” with a symbol for the Indian rupee, a global assessment presents a depressing picture of India’s actual economic performance. In a study whose conclusions were to be expected, the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHDI) has revealed that an appropriate index of poverty (and deprivation) finds its incidence in India and elsewhere to be much greater than...

The goal of food for all can be achieved only through greater and integrated attention to production, procurement, preservation and public distribution. The President, in her address to Parliament on June 4, 2009, announced: “My Government proposes to enact a new law — the National Food Security Act — that will provide a statutory basis for a framework which assures food security for all. Every family below the poverty line in...