A perverse, yet novel reason put forward to explain high inflation is that the poor are eating more as they are becoming less poor. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has been extolled for being responsible for higher consumption, which in a way is a vindication of high inflation. The extended logic used here is that if the poor are eating more and we are paying high...
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When paddy turns poison by Jaideep Hardikar
When he drank poison on January 11, farmer Hargovind Harne’s run-down hut was bursting with freshly harvested paddy. Yet he was neck-deep in debt. Even the bottle of pesticide that he used to take his own life had been bought on credit, as the bill shows. His large stock of grain wasn’t the only puzzle in the 47-year-old’s suicide. Vidarbha is infamous for continuing suicides by cotton farmers but Harne grew food,...
More »The New Geopolitics of Food by Lester R Brown
From the Middle East to Madagascar, high prices are spawning land grabs and ousting dictators. Welcome to the 21st-century food wars. In the United States, when world wheat prices rise by 75 percent, as they have over the last year, it means the difference between a $2 loaf of bread and a loaf costing maybe $2.10. If, however, you live in New Delhi, those skyrocketing costs really matter: A doubling in...
More »Chauhan urges Manmohan to allot more rice, wheat by Neena Vyas
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here on Thursday with a list of demands, including an increase in the allocation of wheat and rice for the public distribution system (PDS). Mr. Chauhan said though there are an estimated 67 lakh Below Poverty Line (BPL) families in Madhya Pradesh, the Centre is allotting PDS grains for only 41 lakh families. “NDA made a mistake” He pointed out this...
More »PDS: Signs of revival by Reetika Khera
Obituaries for the PDS system are a bit premature, based as they are on outdated data and presumptions. Despite flaws like pilfering and leakages, the system shows signs of improvement in certain states. States have demonstrated the political will to invest in the PDS, by putting in state resources to make it work. Cash transfers (CTs) are increasingly advocated as an alternative to the Public Distribution System (PDS). The proponents of...
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