Minister of state for food and civil supplies Babu Lal Nagar seems to have landed in deeper trouble over alleged corruption in allotment of foodgrain under the public distribution system (PDS). According to sources, the Centre had clearly restrained the food and civil supplies department from distributing wheat allotted under PDS in the form of aata (flour), maida (refined flour) or suji (semolina flour). The department admits this in para-2...

Asks the regulator to wait till end of festive season to prevent price speculation. The ministry of food and pubic distribution system has proposed to the Forward Markets Commission (FMC) to extend the ban on trading of sugar futures till the festive season is over. Officials said recommendations have been sent to the regulator to prevent any scope of speculation in the sugar prices at a time when prices of all commodities...

An Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is likely to revise the issue price of levy sugar for the public distribution system (PDS). The group is going to meet on Thursday with a three-point agenda for discussion. The government had recently increased the price of levy sugar for mills, which is meant for PDS, to an average of Rs 17.57 per kg for the 2009-10 crop...

Nationwide discussions and intelligentsia offering solutions to clear the rot in the public distribution system appears to have drawn a naught in Uttar Pradesh. In March, officials from the department of food and civil supplies had acknowledged `serious flaw' in the government policy, and said that the process of issuing ration cards in the state was `too liberal'. Six months on, not much has changed in the state. According to...

Our policymakers would rather let food grains rot than feed the poor. What explains the near-comatose lack of response to a long-brewing crisis of increasing hunger? The most valuable resource that a country has is its people. The poor are not a liability, but an asset; they are the producers of essential goods and services we use, they hold up the sky for us for a pittance of a reward. The...