Blames FCI’s internal bureaucracy for resisting reforms Much to the dismay of several NGOs that want strengthening of the public distribution system (PDS) in India, the World Bank in its latest report has favoured cash transfers. “In the medium to long term, the report recommends offering households the option of a cash transfer while continuing food-based support for specific situations…,” the bank said in the report titled ‘Social Protection for a Changing...

-Irin   Changing the food the US government supplies as aid could deliver better results and still save money, a new study says. The review for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) by researchers at the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy has been welcomed by NGOs and US food aid experts, but the findings have also come in for some criticism. The two-year review considered if USAID...

According to the third advance estimate, India’s foodgrain production in the current farm year (to end in June 2011) will be a record 235.88 million tonnes, including an all-time high wheat output of 84.27 million tonnes against 81.47 million tonnes projected earlier. Ahead of the wheat harvest, the country had buffer foodgrain stock of 47 million tonnes at the start of 2011 in the central pool. A buffer close to double...

It is not often that a social security programme the size of Mahatma Gandhi NREGS - New Delhi has spent Rs 40,000 crore on it in 2010/11 alone - faces an existential moment. But, April 2011 will present one such crossroad: the end of the term of a bureaucrat widely acknowledged as the prime mover behind the five-year old scheme. Brought in six years ago to the Centre from her parent...

The yellow rust disease that hit parts of the crucial wheat-producing States in northern India will hit production by about 5 lakh tonnes, informed sources have said. Although the Agriculture Ministry is said to have taken “timely action,” about 3 lakh hectares under wheat was hit by the yellow rust, a fungal disease that affects the leaves of the standing crop by forming yellow stripes that do not allow photosynthesis to...