Soon after the monsoon was over, rains made unseasonal comeback in Nashik and nearby areas again on Diwali day. As days passed, the initial surprise turned into shock as it rained night after night, and by Sunday it had rained 525mm in November. Heavy showers and thunderstorms all over the district damaged the crops so much that nothing of the rabi (winter) crop remains. Vineyards have thrown away young berries at...

India’s rice output is likely to rise 12.36 per cent this year, on favourable pattern of monsoon and higher acreage area, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO’s) latest food review forecast released yesterday. The agency estimated India’s total milled rice output at 100 million tonnes (mt) this year, as against 89 mt the previous year. Global rice production is estimated to reach 467 mt, compared with 472...

The NAC proposals for the food security bill are narrow and lack in vision. What is needed is a comprehensive bill with universalisation of PDS and a focus on child malnutrition.   There was much excitement when food security became one of the issues in the manifestos of most major political parties in the run up to the 2009 General Elections. With burgeoning food stocks, double-digit food inflation, stagnant malnutrition rates, declining...

Every afternoon at about four, a slight woman named Runi slips out of the cramped, airless room that she shares with her husband and their sixteen children. She skirts the drainage ditch in front of the building, then walks toward the pile of hardened dung cakes that people in this slum on the edge of the northeastern Indian city of Patna use for fuel. Dressed in a bright-yellow sari shot...

India has missed a historic opportunity to abolish hunger through a universal public distribution system (PDS), which entitles all citizens to affordable food. The National Advisory Council (NAC), a progressive body established by the United Progressive Alliance, was to draft such a law, but has recommended a Bill which greatly reduces the public's entitlements. This is a setback. India's annual per capita cereal consumption has fallen to 174 kg, lower than...