Furious debates among policymakers about the proposed national food security law largely revolve around its financial repercussions. The Planning Commission is finally coming around to accepting the Tendulkar Committee’s estimates of 37.2 per cent BPL population or 8.5 crore BPL households. The fiscal burden in implementing the food security law for 37.5 per cent BPL population, with each household being provided 35 kg food grains, is estimated to be Rs...

Is the Planning Commission too singularly focused on reducing food subsidy and intending to dissuade people from buying subsidized food rations even as the government spends thousands of crores to store excess grains in its stocks? Is it being penny wise but pound foolish? An internal note of the Plan panel suggests so. A note prepared by the panel reveals some startling information. On April 1, 2010 -- normally the...

It is the availability of adequate foodgrains to meet the mandatory requirements under the proposed National Food Security Bill that worries the government, not the enhanced subsidy such a move would entail. From what the government is planning it appears that the subsidies on petroleum products would go to meet the requirement of providing cheap foodgrains to the poor under the Public Distribution System (PDS) and to bring the Above...

One of the first issues the reconstituted National Advisory Council (NAC) will have to deal with is the proposed National Food Security Act (NFSA). Given the inability of the government to control food prices that remain unacceptably high and the scant regard the ruling United Progressive Alliance has shown for food security, it should be taken up on an urgent basis if the government is to preserve its credibility among...

CUDDALORE: As labour shortage has been “daunting the farm sector,” the Joint Action Council of farmers' associations has appealed to the government to review the implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREG) Scheme that takes away a major chunk of the workforce. The JAC, which met here on Monday , adopted a resolution. It said that besides the vagaries of weather, what was hindering the growth of the farm sector...