With more than 400 million Indians going to bed hungry each day, food security has become a crucial issue. On June 4 last year, the president made an announcement: “My government proposes to enact a new law — the National Food Security Act — that will provide statutory basis for a framework which assures food security for all. Every family below the poverty line in rural as well as urban...

A common incidence of rotting food grains has been reported in India and the Philippines even as millions are starving. The problem has to be tackled with dexterity at both the domestic and regional levels to curb this alarming wastage of food that contributes to food insecurity at large. RECENT NEWS reports from the Philippines and India interestingly surfaced with one common problem -- rotting food grains in both countries, even...

Food inflation will defy government policies to remain in high single-digit levels in the long run, unless there is a change in an overwhelming bias among farmers towards staples such as wheat and rice, say economists and policymakers. A steady growth in population and rapidly rising income levels are adding to inflationary pressure at a time when agricultural productivity is showing a decline. A major reason is that the agriculture...

MONA SANGWAN, a teacher at a private school in Delhi, who earns just Rs. 4,000 a month and is her family’s sole earning member, had nearly begun to despair. How on earth was she going to raise Rs. 7,000 every month to buy the medicines her brother Ashwini, a kidney transplant patient, needed? Mona would have continued to despair had not the NGO Sarvohit Social Welfare Society stepped in. And to...

Inflation is in the news. Double-digit inflation persists, concentrated in prices of food and necessities. The Retail prices of pulses are in the range of Rs 80-100 per kg. Seasonal vegetables Retail at Rs 30-40 per kg. Yet, our pink newspapers believe there is little reason for concern. There is a boom in purchases of consumer durables. The middle class is prospering. The poor are better-off with the NREGA. And...