-The Business Standard   This year’s paddy procurement season has started with foodgrain stocks being more than double the buffer stock norms. An increase in grain stocks will put a strain on the already-scarce warehousing space, with consequences for safe storage and usability. Thus, excess holding of grains ought to be avoided. Maintaining a stockpile of nearly 55 million tonnes, with average economic cost of wheat and rice being Rs 18,000 per...

Malaria is a mass killer, taking just under 800,000 lives a year. Most of them are babies and children under five. A significant number are pregnant women. It is an entirely preventable disease, caused by a parasite transmitted by mosquito bite, but the millions who live under its curse are too poor and have too few options to be able to avoid it. The malaria vaccine [ See: “Malaria vaccine partly...

There are fears that curative health care will be left to the private sector, while the public system will handle preventive and low-quality care. AN issue of The Lancet earlier this year highlighted some of the problems with public health in India, acknowledging that “it is in crisis”. The robust economic growth over the past 20 years has not translated into better health indices; indeed the decline of infant and child...

The National Food Security Bill, 2011, designed to make access to food a legal right, is the last chance to convert Gandhiji's vision of a hunger-free India into reality. What Mahatma Gandhi said of the role of food in a human being's life in a 1946 speech at Noakhali, now in Bangladesh, remains the most powerful expression of the importance of making access to food a basic human right. Gandhiji also...

-The Hindu Business Line   Input subsidy expenses not contributing to boost productivity The World Bank has said that South Asia's foodgrain stock management, especially in India, needs to improve to tackle inflation. In its focus on food inflation in South Asia, the bank said that high stocks have led to high wastage due to inadequate storage capacity and technology. According to World Bank's estimates, the Food Corporation of India lost 10-16 million tonnes...