-The Telegraph At present, India has 195 million households with ration cards (nearly 794 million people), lower than the beneficiaries we intended to target in 2013 Inordinate delays in carrying out the census exercise are depriving millions of Indians who rely on rations for their subsistence. The exclusion of the poorest from the public distribution system in the pre and post-pandemic years was first flagged by the economists, Jean Drèze and Reetika...

-Newsclick.in Meanwhile, output has also dipped due to weather ravages, which hints at tough times in coming months. Strange as it may sound but rice and wheat allocation for distribution through various welfare schemes has been steadily dipping in the past several years. It is strange because the population is growing and even the Supreme Court has urged the Central government to revise its population norms for food grain allocation since these...

-Livemint.com An uneven distribution of rainfall has left several key rice-producing states parched even as others had to battle excess water The patchy progress of the southwest monsoon this year has cast a long shadow on India’s kharif crop produce, particularly of rice, which is an important constituent of the government’s food distribution programmes. The threat comes right after wheat production in the rabi season took a hit from heatwaves and at...

-Business Standard While the production of foodgrains and the financial position of the government are important points, electoral compulsion may become the deciding factor for the survival of this scheme A sharp drawdown in India’s wheat inventory exacerbated by a fear of a fall in rice production due to drought-like conditions in the main growing states has raised questions on the government’s ability to sustain the free foodgrains distribution scheme beyond its...

Is India going to face inflation in cereal prices during the rest of the current financial year? Experts differ on this. An analysis by Nomura Global Economics and CEIC finds that a below normal monsoon does not always translate into high retail inflation in food. Similarly, an above normal southwest monsoon does not always bring down the rate of food inflation. However, some agricultural experts (please click here, here and...