Quite often it is argued by mainstream economists that a sizeable chunk of the Union Budget every year is wasted because the Government spends that on food and fertiliser subsidies. The burgeoning size of these two subsidies relative to the entire budget as well as the gross domestic product (GDP) is often used to build the argument that economic as well as environmental sustainability of the country is at stake...

-The Indian Express The need of the hour is to expand distribution under the PDS. Failing that, the country is heading towards another round of wasteful stock accumulation even as poor people struggle to feed their families. The paradox of “hunger amidst plenty” has haunted India for a long time and shows no sign of going away. On the contrary, it reached a new plane in 2020. On the one hand, the...

-Newsclick.in A country that ranks 94 among 107 countries in the Global Hunger Index can’t be said to be self-sufficient in foodgrains. The surplus stocks are due to shortage of purchasing power in peoples’ hands. The Indian intelligentsia has an incredible propensity to swallow the self-serving arguments of metropolitan capitalism that are typically supposed to constitute ‘economic wisdom’. And nowhere is this more evident than in the case of India’s food economy. There...

-The Indian Express The gap between the current and year-ago stocks, too, has narrowed down from over 15 mt to 1.5 mt between June 1 and October 1. Covid-19 may have unleashed all-round economic devastation, but has also turned into an opportunity for whittling down the Food Corporation of India’s (FCI) massive grain mountain. At 68.49 million tonnes (mt), the total wheat and rice stocks in the Central pool as on October 1...

-Networkideas.org The GDP growth in the first quarter (April-June) of 2020 over the first quarter of the previous year has been minus 24 per cent according to preliminary official estimates. But most knowledgeable people believe that even this is an underestimate of the actual contraction brought about by the lockdown. In fact, a former chief statistician of India, Pronab Sen, believes that the actual contraction would have been about 32 per...