With expectations of a record wheat production this year (2009-10), the Union government is upbeat about providing food grains to the Below Poverty Line (BPL) families on a sustained basis under the proposed National food security bill. “Despite the drought caused by (-) 23 per cent rainfall during the kharif season this year, farmers have maintained a production of 170.29 million tonnes of rice and wheat… which calls for satisfaction. With...
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Mismanaging food
Bizarre are the ways of the government when it comes to managing, or mismanaging, the country’s food economy. On the one hand, it goes on mopping up bulk of the wheat and rice arriving in the mandis to build up its grain stocks, clearly to prevent foodgrain prices from falling below the minimum support price (MSP) level. On the other hand, it plans to offload 3 million tonnes of wheat...
More »The Kernel Of Bad Ethics by Suman Sahai
IF DISRUPTIONS over phone tapping and the India Premier League controversy had not taken Parliament sessions hostage, the Rajya Sabha may have passed the controversial Seeds Bill in the week of April 26, when it was slated to come up for discussion. The government was keen to give this Bill the force of law as soon as possible because the seed industry wants it. The Seeds Bill originally proposed in 2004...
More »Food security not by food alone
Politics runs the risk of being reduced to the art of the passable — it has to be approved by the legislature, by the omniscient television anchors, by sulking editorial writers forced to cede ground to the TV anchors, and, most crucially , by Sonia Gandhi. The food security bill was drafted for Ms Gandhi’s favour and has been shafted by her displeasure. Food security, hostage, in any case, to...
More »People need to chew more than govt can bite off by Priyadarshi Siddhanta
The empowered Group of Ministers on food security, scheduled to meet tomorrow, will have to walk a tightrope in trying to fulfill the ‘food for all’ promise made by the Congress party in its election manifesto. Not only is the government hamstrung by its inability to sustain procurement levels of of 50 million tonnes of foodgrains every year required to feed all poor — below poverty line (BPL) and above...
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