-The Business Standard Financial inclusion must be set up to pay for itself The Jan Dhan Yojana, a scheme for financial inclusion announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech, intends to take banking services to the 40 per cent of India that does not have bank accounts. This task is daunting. A good portion of those no-frills accounts that have already been opened have only minimal activity -...

-The Business Standard In a country where 35 to 40 per cent of food is not consumed, the government urgently needs to reduce wastage to an acceptable level By current estimates, India's total population will be similar to China's by 2028, 1.45 billion. By 2050, India's population is expected to reach 1.7 billion, which will then be equivalent to nearly that of China and the US combined. A fundamental question then...

-The Business Standard Interview with Union minister in charge of food and public distribution Ever since the new government took office in May, food prices and related issues have been one of the most discussed subjects. Ram Vilas Paswan, the minister in charge of food and public distribution, says hoarders are to blame. And, speaks of the various other priorities under his charge. Edited exceprts of a talk with Sanjeeb Mukherjee: * The...

-The Business Standard States need to create alternative marketing structures for farm produce since middlemen also provide vital services that are otherwise unavailable to the farmer   One of the issues often raised in the context of high food inflation is the pressing need to change the Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC), the marketing boards established by state governments. The earlier United Progressive Alliance government had asked the Congress-ruled states to remove fruit...

-The Hindustan Times Wastage of all kinds of food during farm-to-fork journey and also because of mindless indulgences by people with dispensable income whenever they visit supermarkets remains a global curse. It is known that over one-third of India's fruit and vegetables valued at over Rs. 13,000 crore is wasted annually in the absence of adequate refrigerated storage infrastructure and logistics deficiencies. The other villain is the anachronistic distribution system, favouring middlemen...