Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and the farm lobby reacted sharply today to the Centre’s announcement of the Minimum Support Price for Wheat. The Centre yesterday had announced a nominal hike of Rs 20 in the MSP, fixing it at Rs 1,120 per quintal. Describing it as a ‘stab in the back’, the Punjab CM claimed that the MSP fixed for wheat is lower than the rate at which the...
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Losing their nerve? by Jean Dreze
Five years ago, when the proposed National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was a subject of fierce controversy, Bunker Roy compared the attitude of the government to that of a dog who crosses a road half-way, can’t decide whether to go forward or backward, and gets run over. This enlightening image applies again today, in the context of the proposed National Food Security Act (NFSA). The National Advisory Council (NAC) discussed...
More »All is not well on the global food front
Reports of a possible global food crisis could not have come at a worse time for India. Food inflation is still over 16% and though plentiful rains this year hold out the promise of one of our best agricultural years ever , last week’s warning by the US administration of ‘dramatically’ lower supplies of corn, rice and wheat could force the RBI to tighten more than otherwise warranted in order...
More »Speculation and the economics of hunger by Biraj Patnaik
A recent report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, provides a damning indictment of the role of speculation in food commodities in fuelling the global food crisis. The report – 'Food Commodities Speculation and Food Price Crisis – was released on the eve of an emergency meeting of the UN-FAO on the instability in agricultural markets. The global food crisis in 2007-08 led to...
More »Rotting grain & judicial transgression by Ashok Khemka
The mountainous state-owned food stocks lying in the open and rotting in the rain are in stark conflict with a failing public distribution system , hunger, malnutrition and high food prices. The poor management of food stocks provoked the Supreme Court to transgress into executive domain when, on August 12, the court made certain directions like limiting procurement to covered warehousing capacity and distributing the rotting foodgrains free of cost...
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