The National Advisory Council, led by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, has come up with the muchawaited contours of the National Food Security Act. The NFSA, it is hoped, will become India’s flagship programme for tackling hunger and malnutrition, equal in scale and vision to the ambitious and highly successful Fome Zero Programme launched by President Lula Da Silva in Brazil. The UPA government is also hoping that the NFSA will...

Indian Railways has come to Food Corporation of India’s (FCI) rescue in flood-hit Punjab and Haryana, where part of its foodgrain stocks have been rotting due to heavy rains. The national transporter has given a discount of 35% to the public sector food procurer to carry grains from northern India to other parts of the country. The railways also expects to boost its own revenue by transporting a large volume of...

With the inflation rate of pulses still in double digits for more than a year, the government today said the supply of pulses would remain a critical problem for another two to three years. The government is expecting an increase of two million tonnes (mt) in production of pulses in the current crop year (July 2010-June 2011). “So far as pulses are concerned, it is going to be a critical problem not...

The Government of India’s initiative to focus on agricultural development in the eastern states, as represented by the meeting that the Union ministers for finance and agriculture attended in Kolkata last week, is welcome if belated. Some may see this as a pre-election gimmick with an eye to elections in Bihar and Bengal. But there is no gainsaying the fact that the region’s agricultural economy needs a productivity boost. Among...

The goal of food for all can be achieved only through greater and integrated attention to production, procurement, preservation and public distribution. The President, in her address to Parliament on June 4, 2009, announced: “My Government proposes to enact a new law — the National Food Security Act — that will provide a statutory basis for a framework which assures food security for all. Every family below the poverty line in...