-The Financial Express The Odisha experience shows that PDS can play a pivotal role in bringing convergence and making India’s two important missions—food and nutrition security—successful in a short time. New Delhi: India’s public distribution system (PDS) is the largest food security programme in the world, which covers nearly 60% of the population and costs Rs 1.45 trillion—close to 1.4% of the national income. PDS has often been criticised for its structure,...

-TheWire.in New research shows the resilience and strength of tribal food systems. Recent findings from a research conducted with the close involvement of tribal communities disprove the view that the tribal food system is inherently backward. Several of these forest-based foods have been found to be rich in nutrition. The importance of forest-based food increases during adverse weather such as frequent drought conditions. Hence, its role in fighting hunger and Malnutrition is...

-Livemint.com The Malnutrition burden in India remains high despite some progress and there is tremendous inter-state and inter-district variability, the district wise nutrition profiles show New Delhi: The government’s flagship program National Nutrition Mission (NNM) has a clear picture of the challenges it faces in dealing with Malnutrition after the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) on Wednesday released nutrition profiles of all states and 640 districts of India. The Malnutrition burden in...

-IndiaSpend.com So far, only a few states such as Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had made available millets and that too only in certain pockets. The union government proposes to include coarse grains such as jowar (sorghum), bajra (pearl millet) and ragi (finger millet) in the mid-day meal programme in schools and also distribute it through the government subsidised food programme, the public distribution system (PDS), agriculture secretary SK Patnaik said recently. This announcement...

-Down to Earth India needs to find a permanent solution to the problem of public stock holding, as it is a matter of survival for hundreds of millions people During the negotiations for WTO Agreement on Agriculture in 2001, India raised concerns over food security and flexibility that developing nations must have when it comes to providing subsidies to key farm inputs. Seventeen years have passed since then and countries like...