In a bold move that will not just prune the humongous fertiliser Subsidy bill but also change the face of agriculture, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, aided by several Cabinet colleagues, today brought in a nutrient-based Subsidy (NBS) regime. This will incentivise companies to innovate beyond a handful of products sold in the market presently and offer farmers choice based on soil needs. This is expected to trim the Subsidy bill...

Galloping food prices have shattered family budgets across the country, with latest inflation data showing that prices rose at nearly 18% in the week ending February 6. Many essentials of Indian kitchens are almost beyond reach; sugar is up by nearly 60%, pulses by 46% and potatoes by 53% over a year. In a country already suffering from chronic malnutrition and low incomes, this trend is a killer. President Pratibha...

Surging food inflation, decline in agriculture growth rate and the impending food security bill are expected to be at the centre of the coming Union budget. With a bumper wheat harvest expected this rabi, there are projections of a turnaround in the farm sector from the present growth rate of 0.2 per cent. Food prices, which grew at an unprecedented rate of nearly 20 per cent in January, are expected...

The draft Food Security Bill, which has returned to the negotiating table of the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) after a gap, is, among other things, expected to witness discussions on the number of people to be covered by the scheme across the country, whether the other vulnerable sections of the society are to brought within its ambit, whether it should be confined to the distribution of either rice or...

Without fertilisers, said Normal Borlaug, the world would need two billion people to volunteer to just disappear.  Obviously, it makes sense to increase the supply of fertilisers rather than to look for those volunteers. Sense, however, is in short supply in India’s fertiliser policy , and we have a supply shortage of the stuff. The domestic price of fertiliser has been static since 2002 and the domestic industry has seen...