Our policymakers would rather let food grains rot than feed the poor. What explains the near-comatose lack of response to a long-brewing crisis of increasing hunger? The most valuable resource that a country has is its people. The poor are not a liability, but an asset; they are the producers of essential goods and services we use, they hold up the sky for us for a pittance of a reward. The...

KEY TRENDS   • Section 105 of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, which provides for excluding 13 Central legislation, including Land Acquisition (Mines) Act 1885, Atomic Energy Act, 1962, Railway Act 1989, National Highways Act 1956 and Metro Railways (Construction of Works) Act, 1978, from its purview, has been amended for payment of compensation with rigours $ • The amendments have now...

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...

IN A remote corner of Bahia state, in north-eastern Brazil, a vast new farm is springing out of the dry bush. Thirty years ago eucalyptus and pine were planted in this part of the cerrado (Brazil’s savannah). Native shrubs later reclaimed some of it. Now every field tells the story of a transformation. Some have been cut to a litter of tree stumps and scrub; on others, charcoal-makers have moved...

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...