The management of food and poverty in India is getting increasingly unreal. On the one hand, the country has a bumper harvest with every likelihood of the grain mountain to be procured adding to the existing mountain of official stocks. Without adequate storage space, a not-so-insignificant part of it will rot and go to waste. On the other hand, the government will not allow wheat exports until it is clear...

The watchdog risks becoming “a sinecure for retired persons” This May, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) is due to appear before the International Coordinating Committee of National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in Geneva for its re-accreditation as an ‘A' grade institution. Ahead of this process, a consortium of non-governmental organisations released a report here on Wednesday on the compliance of the NHRC with the ‘Paris...

If present political trends and shifts in Andhra Pradesh intensify, the State could see an election within a year. And not just over Telangana. When Chandrababu Naidu sits on a hunger fast for suffering farmers, you know something is afoot in Andhra Pradesh. Excessive rains have devastated the crops in the State. And losses have been enormous. But a farmer losing over Rs.15,000 on an acre of paddy will get less...

Sitting on his father’s shoulders, two-year-old Rahul Kumar giggles and tugs on a lock of his father’s hair. A happy, healthy-looking boy, Rahul has already seen much of India. Born in a small village in northern Bihar, he has spent roughly half of his short life in Punjab, where his parents work as seasonal farm labourers. He has spent a few months in his parents’ village. The rest has been spent...

Television and print media have been awash with pictures of stacks of sacks of rotting foodgrain. And played in an almost infinite loop, these pictures become obviously powerful. They can become a call to urgent and revolutionary action. This perhaps accounts for the emotive appeal of the Supreme Court’s recent intervention on distributing this grain, and to keep procurement commensurate with available storage facilities. It does not, however, explain the...