Yes, food prices are rising but more competition is not the answer — it's time to stop over-consumption. Slowly, surely, a new mixture of consensus and fault lines is emerging about world food. On the one hand, there is agreement we are entering a new era in which basic agricultural commodity prices are rising after decades of falling. This will hit the poorest hardest, as an Oxfam report this week on...
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Focus on food, not vote by Shankkar Aiyar
The debate over the National Food Security Act has been reduced to a circus for political parties, NGOs and the National Advisory Council to perform verbal calisthenics. The discussion on who is entitled, who is not entitled and who should be entitled has gone on for over two years. The discourse is deteriorating into informed nit-picking. The time for debate is over; the time for decision is overdue. Let us get...
More »With the grain by Yoginder K Alagh
India has large wheat stocks already yet policy dictates they increase. In states like Punjab, Haryana, UP and Gujarat prices have fallen and are below the minimum support prices. This is a policy-induced outcome. A safe game in grains is fine, given the global politics of grain trade and the great ability of Indian politics to subsidise the wrong man in the vote bank — but how safe is safe? The...
More »Move to provide cash instead of foodgrains in Delhi questioned
-The Business Standard A group of activists led by Arvind Kejriwal today raised questions about Delhi government's move to provide cash instead of subsidised foodgrains for the poor, suspecting that the survey conducted ahead of the rolling out of the project was not genuine. "Why is Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit taking so much interest in the scheme? Why is she hell bent upon closing down PDS shops? Is the Chief Minister...
More »NGOs oppose direct cash transfer to poor families
Various civil society groups and NGOs Thursday came together to oppose the Delhi government’s plan to give cash instead of ration to the city’s poor through the Public Distribution System (PDS). The activists said the government had taken the decision in haste. ‘We had gone to meet (Chief Minister) Sheila Dikshit yesterday, but she did not listen to us at all. Instead, she screamed at us and threatened to put us in...
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