-Economic and Political Weekly A "high-level" committee makes half-baked recommendations which will rollback the PDS. A ccording to media reports, former Union Minister for Food Shanta Kumar recently disowned the National Food Security Act (NFSA) on behalf of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He explained, without blinking, that the BJP had just pretended to support the Act when it was being discussed in Parliament, for fear of the possible electoral consequences of...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Five Important Questions On Food Security -Lola Nayar
-Outlook A parsing of the recent expert report on food security reveals that most of its solutions do not meet the greater public good. The BJP's election manifesto had stated "that ‘universal food security' is integral to national security. BJP will take steps to ensure that the benefits of the scheme reach the common man and that the right to food does not remain an act on paper or a political...
More »Food insecurity acts -Brinda Karat
-The Hindu The Shanta Kumar Committee's recommendations to unbundle the Food Corporation of India are in tune with U.S.-led demands raised in the World Trade Organization The Shanta Kumar Committee report, released last week, on a range of issues relating to procurement, storage and distribution of food grains is not only deeply flawed in its reading of the situation on food security, but also short on facts. It was prepared under the...
More »Reforming FCI or cutting back food security? -Nitin Sethi
-Business Standard The Shanta Kumar Committee on restructuring FCI has suggested the reach of the National Food Security Act be curtailed to 40 per cent of the population The National Democratic Alliance government set up the high-level Shanta Kumar Committee to restructure and reform the state-owned Food Corporation of India. Instead, the panel ended up providing a road map to restructure the entire farming and food security policy of the government. In...
More »FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore
-Livemint.com The abolition of a procurement-based programme would undermine the very raison d'être of FCI rather than bringing about any restructuring The report of the high-level committee on reorienting the role and restructuring of Food Corp. of India (FCI) is a pointer to the government's thinking on matters of agriculture and food security. Among the key recommendations of the committee are: winding up of the activities of FCI in traditional procurement states;...
More »