Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was right when he maintained in his meeting with the media that the judiciary should not stray into the realm of policy formulation for food management. But the same plea cannot apply to the media which brought the issue of rotting of foodgrain to public attention and virtually put the government in the dock for criminal wastage of grains in its warehouses. Policy deficiencies are clearly...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday virtually ticked off the Supreme Court, saying that it "should not get into policy formation". The trigger for this rebuke was the apex court's anger at grains rotting in FCI and government godowns, and its direction to agriculture minister Sharad Pawar to distribute grains for free to families living below the poverty line. Talking to a group of editors on Monday morning, Singh said...

The wastage of millions of tonnes of food grain due to lack of storage facilities may have rocked parliament and prompted the Supreme Court to direct the government to distribute grains free of cost to the poor, but Kaushik Basu, chief economic advisor in the finance ministry, believes lack of warehouses is only part of the problem and is in no way responsible for the rising food prices. In ‘The economics...

The wastage of millions of tonnes of food grain due to lack of storage facilities may have rocked parliament and prompted the Supreme Court to direct the government to distribute grains free of cost to the poor, but Kaushik Basu, chief economic advisor in the finance ministry, believes lack of warehouses is only part of the problem and is in no way responsible for the rising food prices. In ‘The economics...

Union Minister for Agriculture Sharad Pawar on Saturday dismissed the possibility of free foodgrains distribution. “The government already spends Rs. 66,000 crore on foodgrains subsidy. We buy wheat from farmers at Rs. 15 a kg, but sell it to the Antyodaya population at Rs. 2 a kg. How can we sell any cheaper than that?” He was speaking at a meeting of the Maharashtra Pradesh Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Free distribution of foodgrains...