The National Advisory Council (NAC) had been widely credited with framing three pro-people legislations — the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the Right to Information (RTI) and the Forest Rights Act — under the UPA 1 government. So when NAC 2 began discussions on the Food Security Act in mid-2010, expectations were high. The initial vision of an act with a universal public distribution system (PDS), extensive children's entitlements...

The recent spike in vegetable prices, due partly to erratic supplies, could well have been averted if the novel concept of “relay cropping” in vegetable farming had become popular. This system allows growing three to seven crops of different vegetables on the same patch of land over a period to ensure a steady and regular flow of vegetables to markets. This innovative approach, significantly, has been conceived and successfully put into practice...

Fast-growing emerging nations are taking increasingly aggressive actions to beat back rising food prices as they grow more worried of threats to stability if prices don't start to retreat. Developing-market governments have unveiled a laundry list of measures—including price caps, export bans and rules to counter commodity speculation—to keep food costs from disrupting their economies as price spikes that some had hoped were temporary have stretched into the new year. Some...

Everyone agrees that there is a food crisis. As ordinary members of the public we know there’s one every time we go out shopping for vegetables. My mother knows there’s a crisis because, after recently sacking her cook, she discovered the lady had left with all the onions in the house. The media agrees there’s one, and sends more TV crews to talk to onion farmers, even though the TV reporters...

Economists across the world are expressing concern about rising food prices. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently released its Food Price Index. The list showed that a number of foods cost more than during the world food crisis of two thousand eight. The index is at its highest level since it began in nineteen ninety. Demonstrations and deadly food riots have broken out this month, as they did in...