This allocation is in addition to 25 lakh tonnes of grains released for BPL population in August Ban on export of pulses and permission to import pulses at zero duty to continue till March 2012 The Centre on Tuesday announced an additional allocation of five million tonnes of wheat and rice to States for distribution to the Below Poverty Line (BPL) and Above Poverty Line (APL) beneficiaries through the Targeted Public Distribution...

Over 4,000 Chakma tribal people in Mizoram have been starving for the past few weeks, a non-governmental organisation said Thursday. "Over 800 Chakma tribal families comprising over 4,000 men, women and children in four villages in Chakma Autonomous District Council (CADC) areas of southern Mizoram have been starving for several weeks," New Delhi based Mizoram Chakma Development Forum (MCDF) said in a letter to the Mizoram government. MCDF president Hemanta Larma said:...

The spectre of rising onion prices is haunting Indian politics again. As prices trebled over a period of three weeks, touching Rs.90 a kg in some parts of the country, the liliaceous plant, whose bulb is the mainstay of many Indian staple recipes, became a topic of debate and discussion not only for ordinary consumers, but for economists and policymakers as well. India is the world's second largest producer of...

Large queues outside the ration shop across Maharashtra could become a thing of the past, if the State Government manages to implement a new scheme for distributing foodgrains in the vicinity of people's houses. Under the scheme, the two-and-a-half crore ration card holders registered under the public distribution system (PDS) in the State, instead of getting a monthly quota of grains from the ration shop, will get three, six or 12...

For some reason, governments - as well as the development ''industry'' as a whole - have always had a tendency to look for universal panaceas, particular silver bullets that will solve all or most of their implementation problems and somehow achieve the development project for them. The latest such initiative bullet that seems to have been accepted as a silver bullet is the Unique Identification Project, which is now seen...