-News on Air   The Food Security Bill finalised by the National Advisory Council will be brought to Parliament shortly for approval. The draft bill entitles 75 percent of the population to highly subsidised food grains. It provides for people living Below Povery Line getting rice at three rupees a kilogram and wheat at two rupees a kilogram. The Bill proposes that general households will have the right to 20 kilograms...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday approved the final draft food security bill. The bill, when passed, will provide cheaper foodgrain to 75% of the population, or 900 million Indians. This is much higher than what a PM-appointed panel recommended, but is lower than the 90% coverage sought by the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC). To cover 90% of the population under a food law, the Centre will have to...

Andhra farmers shun growing paddy this kharif in absence of buyers, storage space Achanta, a small village in Andhra Pradesh, hit the headlines in 1967 with a record rice yield in the kharif or monsoon crop season. It was the time of the Green Revolution. N Subba Rao, a farmer from the village, harvested three tonnes of paddy from just one kilogramme of seeds. Other farmers followed suit and the village...

-The Times of India   Food inflation eased to a six-week low on the back of improved supplies of vegetables and pulses in mid-June but fuel inflation inched up sustaining the price pressures on the economy. Data released by the commerce ministry showed that food inflation slowed to 7.78% in the week to June 18, declining from the previous week's 9.13%. Food inflation has been volatile in the past few months...

There’s no outrage when law, policy are outsourced to corporates IN order to get our perspective on issues of national importance right, we could do well to turn our ears from the din created by vested interests. The unduly vehement questioning of the process of concerned citizens (or “civil society”) engaging in legislative and policy consultations is exactly the sort of noise we must not allow to deflect our attention...