India is free from the deadly stem rust fungal disease in wheat which destroyed swathes of the staple foodgrain crop in Africa and other parts of the world, Parliament was informed today.   "Wheat varieties grown in India are resistant to most of the Indian races of stem rust. Several varieties are also resistant to the new race (Ug99) of stem rust as per testing carried out in Kenya and Ethiopia,"...

This article documents and then examines the various benefits that, it is claimed, will flow from linking the Unique Identity number with the public distribution system and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It filters the unfounded claims, which arise from a poor understanding of how the PDS and NREGS function, from the genuine ones. On the latter, there are several demanding conditions that need to be met in order...

Increase in offtake under various public distribution schemes. Supply of wheat and rice will have to be doubled if the proposed National Food Security Act for targeted beneficiaries is implemented with the current delivery mechanism, in which leakages are too high, the Economic Survey for 2010-11 has said. “Once we give a legal guarantee to people about the food that they are to receive, if we try to deliver on this promise...

WHILE old stocks of foodgrains which are contaminated and inedible are being given to adivasi areas through the public distribution system (PDS), the newer stocks are being kept for exports, Brinda Karat, member of parliament and CPI(M) Polit Bureau member, told the union food minister K V Thomas on February 21. Showing to the minister the samples of contaminated rice collected from adivasi areas in Andhra Pradesh, she said inedible wheat...

The Economic Survey has been silent on the proposed National Food Security Bill and the projections of foodgrains needed to provide food security to citizens. The chapter on Agriculture and Food Management talks of supply-side constraints, the need to feed a growing population, the procurement and off take of foodgrains, buffer stocks of foodgrains, food subsidy, the targeted public distribution system (TPDS), and the central issue price (CIP) of foodgrains, but...