-Livemint.com After extreme rain and severe flooding, Pakistan is dealing with acute food shortage. Moreover, dollar crunch has kept Pakistani food importers at mercy of grey market Extreme floods might not be a problem for Pakistanis anymore, but acute food shortage and drying forex reserve have made Pakistani food importers vulnerable to the grey market for payments. Under the grey market, the commodities are traded through markets that are unauthorised by the manufacturers....

-The Hindu Q1 surge in private consumption not just a function of pent-up demand but also rising employment levels, it says Demand for work under the national rural employment guarantee scheme hit a two-year low in August, signalling that the recovering economy is creating more jobs in rural as well as urban India, the Union Finance Ministry said on Saturday.    India’s inflation, the Ministry said, is “in control” and expected to moderate...

-ThePrint.in The intense industrial processes used to produce ultra-processed foods destroy the natural structure of the ingredients and strip away many beneficial nutrients. * In some countries, ultra-processed foods now account for 50% or more calories consumed. * Two new studies have shown that poor nutrition may not be enough to explain health risks. * Some researchers have theorized that ultra-processed foods increase inflammation. * Ingredients such as emulsifiers, thickeners, protein isolates, and other industrial-sounding...

-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...

-ThePrint.in Lower rainfall in some parts of the country is expected to keep food prices elevated in the coming months. Which means inflation will be above 6%. India’s retail inflation surged to 7 per cent in August from a five-month low of 6.7 per cent in July. Food, which accounts for nearly half of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) basket, grew 7.62 percent as against 6.69 per cent in July. While the...