The government has asked states including Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Bihar to set up grain procuring infrastructure to increase lifting from the farmers so that requirement for the proposed food security law could be met. The Food Corporation of India, chairman and managing director, Siraj Hussain said state-level procuring agencies can help in arranging sufficient credit facilities for carrying out grain purchase activities without depending on the Central...

How economically sustainable is food subsidy? The cost could even be double of what the government estimates Food deprivation and malnutrition are completely unacceptable and everything has to be done to eliminate such an evil. The prevalence of malnutrition in a country like India is in itself a cause for serious concern since malnourished children may jeopardise India’s favourable demographic dividend (as per independent estimates, close to 60 per cent of...

-The Business Standard Implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), a flagship programme of the Central government to alleviate poverty, has resulted in an increase of up to 20 per cent in the cost of farm production in Karnataka. It has also created a shortage of labour in the agriculture sector in the state. According to a study conducted by the Bangalore-based Institute for Social and Economic Change...

Even as the Centre prepares to implement its proposed National Food Security Act, States have expressed their unhappiness about the contours of the Bill, particularly the cap on the number of beneficiaries which will automatically reduce their allocation of subsidised foodgrains. Requirement of funds, more foodgrains for distribution under the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS), and paucity of storage capacity was a common refrain during the two-day conference of State Food...

Kerala on Wednesday raised serious apprehensions on the effectiveness of the proposed National Food Security law as it could remove large number of poor families from the beneficiary list besides putting enormous financial burden on the state. Shibu Baby John, food and civil supplies minister, Kerala said the centre must apply separate socio-economic critieria for choosing beneficiaries under the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) as because of better human index of...