Some 48,315 tonnes of wheat procured by the Punjab government is to be fed to cattle after being declared unfit for human consumption. The stock, enough to feed around 595,000 people through the public distribution system (PDS) for a year, had piled up over the previous three years. Officials at the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which declared the grains unfit after an inquiry in March, said Punjab’s procurement agencies had...

A day after the Prime Minister urged a quick start to a national food security network, it has emerged that his government may let foodgrain —enough to feed 140 million poor people for a month—decay, instead of spending money and effort distributing it to the poor. Warning of an “emergency situation”, a person familiar with the situation told the Hindustan Times that 17.8 million tonnes of wheat and rice are being...

Government on Thursday sanctioned funds for the second phase of the ambitious scheme to allocate unique identity numbers to 10 crore of the country's population. The Cabinet Committee on Unique Identification Authority of India, at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, approved the commencement of Phase II of the scheme at an estimated cost of Rs 3023.01 crore. "Of this, an amount of Rs. 477.11 crore would be towards recurring...

India’s top grain-producers Punjab and Haryana will raise planting of basmati rice as floods have washed away the recently sown regular grades, farmers and trade officials said on Monday. Basmati rice can be planted late, but yields are much lower than regular grades, with farmers also having to face fluctuating market prices, unlike common rice grades that official agencies buy at fixed, attractive rates. “Paddy output will certainly drop this year. However,...

Contesting government figures, several MPs on Monday stressed that the number of manual scavengers still left in the country was much higher than what was furnished by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment — 1.17 lakh. At a meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee attached to the Ministry, they pointed out that this figure did not square with the much larger number of proposals received by the Ministry of Housing...