While the National Advisory Council (NAC), Planning Commission and the Prime Minister Office are grappling over the proposed National Food Security Bill, the government has been steadily increasing allocation under the Targetted Public Distribution System (TPDS) during last many years. According to Siraj Hussain, chairman and managing director, Food Corporation of India (FCI), with the rise in procurement of wheat and rice by the corporation during last few years, more and...

Uttar Pradesh is not a state readily associated with dynamic economic reform. But the state has taken giant strides in reforming one of the least reformed industries in India: the sugar industry. The country’s second largest sugar producing state after Maharashtra is undertaking an aggressive privatisation of its state-owned sugar mills. It has, just recently, successfully sold off 10 of the 11 operating units of the state’s Sugar Corporation to...

The Central government should evolve a policy of announcing remunerative price for agricultural produces in advance to bail out farmers from possible distress said Karnataka minister for rural development and panchayat raj Jagadish Shettar. Presiding over the function to inaugurate the Krishi Mela-2010 and Jilla Krishi Utsav at University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) here on Sunday he said such a move on the part of the Centre would enable farmers to...

Considerable sections of the urban population may face serious food insecurity even while the urban economy grows. There is a need for urgent action on this front. Over the two decades of rapid growth of the Indian economy, the urban economy is generally perceived as having done very well. However, high urban economic growth need not by itself imply improved living standards for all urban residents. In particular, the recent and...

India has long been simultaneously a country of enormous wealth and desperate poverty. In recent decades, the distance has only grown between those who enjoy living standards comparable to the finest in the world, and the millions left far behind. Even as Indians crowd the lists of the world’s richest dollar billionaires, an estimated 200 million people sleep hungry. Half our children are malnourished and nearly a fifth severely so....