With Europe and Gulf countries, putting in place stringent safety norms for ensuring that pesticide residue in agricultural crops remain below prescribed limits, basmati (aromatic rice) exporters from India have urged the Union agriculture ministry to ensure that farmers use less pesticide. Europe and Gulf nations are main export destinations for Indian basmati rice. In a letter to agriculture ministry, Vijay Setia, president, All India Rice Exporters’ Association has said that some...

Independent India's greatest failing must be its inability to feed its people. With 42 per cent of all children malnourished, 56 per cent of women anaemic, and the country ranked 65th out of 84 countries on the Global Hunger Index, the report card of the state on nutrition must have an F. Most disturbing is the fact that things have got worse over time. In the first half of the...

The National Advisory Council's move to restrict universalisation of the PDS to the most disadvantaged districts may ultimately end up limiting its impact. RECENT weeks have seen rather contradictory statements on the challenge of ensuring food security and the set of feasible initiatives for managing the food economy. To start with, the National Advisory Council (NAC), which recognises the need for a universal public distribution system (PDS), and which was expected to...

Their ongoing negotiations remain shrouded in secrecy, but there are already reports that India and the European Union (EU) will have a free-trade agreement ready by the end of August, and that they will be putting signatures to it before the end of 2010. Yet it is a potential development that is causing more nervous chatter than joyous jitters here in India, where drug manufacturers in particular have raised concerns over...

Global fertiliser prices have started to hot up once again, in anticipation of tight supplies in 2010-11 and some significant mergers and acquisitions, which could increase the import bill for India and also make key soil nutrients expensive. In just the latter half of July, prices of key phosphatic fertilisers, urea, DAP, phosphate and potash have shot up in a marked manner. Between July 16 and July 29, phosphate prices...