After much debate, the Cabinet cleared the Food Security bill. Will it really ensure food for every Indian? THE Lokpal Bill debate may have ended in a fiasco but 2011 ended on a positive note for the Congress-led UPA government on another count. Its pet project, the National Food Security Bill (NFSB), was cleared by the Union Cabinet and introduced in Parliament. The bill seeks to address widespread hunger in the...

Signalling its commitment to roll out the Food Security Bill in the next fiscal, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee is likely to announce a token allocation of Rs. 5,000 crore in the forthcoming budget. The funds would primarily be directed at creating and strengthening the institutional arrangement to deliver the massive allotment promised under the scheme. The Food Security bill is of extreme political importance to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)...

Food price inflation, and inflation in general, has become less of an issue. But it isn’t an issue that will go away. Give it till June and inflation is likely to inch up again. Competition is a good antidote against price increases. It ensures efficiency and reduces price volatility. Logically, food price inflation should trigger and stimulate agricultural reform, so there is competition and supply-side changes can occur. But in...

-Orissa Diary   Narayanpatna : About 5000 tribals from across Narayanpatna and Bandhugan blocks in Koraput district were stopped by heavily armed security forces at different places this morning as they were on their way to attend the two-day convention on preservation of tribal language and culture.  This convention, planned for 21st and 22nd February 2012 at Balipeta Hatpada, was to be attended by 10,000 tribals from 12 different tribes across Koraput district....

The huge expenditure on the food bill, with the attendant leakages, could well make fiscal recovery impossible In the first part of this article, we have estimated the actual cost of implementing the Food Security bill in its current form. In this part, we now examine the fiscal sustainability of the same. The current state of the revenue and expenditure trends of the Central government (refer table) show that while revenue...