In pushing for a greatly truncated PDS, the Food Security Bill proposed by the NAC, which has many right-to-food activists, undermines the PDS itself. ENSURING food security was the big promise of United Progressive Alliance-2. The promise to enact legislation to ensure a minimum quantity of affordable food to all poor households in the country was part of the election manifesto of the Congress party that leads the government. The 100-day...

A Central team, led by a senior official of the Union Agriculture Ministry, arrived in West Bengal on Wednesday and held a meeting with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and three key Ministers and Departmental Secretaries before leaving for spot visits to the 11 districts declared Drought-affected by the State government. Finance Minister Asim Kumar Dasgupta, who was also present at the meeting, told journalists at the Secretariat that the eight-member team...

“The hungry must not be left out” The steering group of the Right to Food Campaign on Saturday expressed its apprehension about doing away with the distribution of subsidised foodgrains to Above Poverty line (APL) beneficiaries under the Public Distribution System (PDS), as suggested by the Supreme Court. While welcoming the court's order on rotting foodgrains, the campaign, that is pressing for universal PDS, has said that leaving out APL would mean...

Agricultural experts today cast a wary eye on the steep rise in the cost of wheat prompted by a Russian export ban and the questions looming over harvests in other parts of the world because of Drought or flooding with memories still fresh of food riots set off by spiking prices just two years ago, Food prices rose 5 per cent globally during August, according to the UN, spurred mostly by...

Even though the West Bengal government is yet to confirm that suicides by farmers in the Ausgram block of Bardhaman district are Drought-related, following the third incident on Wednesday, district authorities admitted on Thursday that the farmers were “under a stress of debt burden.” “It is not possible to be sure whether the suicides are Drought-related or not, but it is clear that the economic condition of the farmers was not...