-The Hindu Business Line Mother Nature possesses bountiful natural resources. After all, it is not for nothing that our planet is today supporting a seven billion human population, besides a large number of other living beings with varying survival requirements. Till around the end of the 19th century, agriculture, in the form it was practised, provided more or less enough food to sustain the human population of that time. This is...

-The Economic Times The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has said the government fixed the minimum support price of food grain crops in a skewed manner and also faulted it for following inadequate norms on buffer food grains to meet contingencies during the audit period of 2006-07 and 2011-12. In a report titled 'Storage Management and Movement of Food Grains in Food Corporation of India', tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, the CAG...

-The Times of India India may be facing the shame of 47% of its children suffering from malnutrition and about 30% of its population living below poverty line, but food continues to rot in government granaries. The Food Corporation of India (FCI) has admitted in data accessed through RTI that the amount of damaged wheat has increased from 2,010 million tonnes (MT) in 2009-2010 to 2,401.61 MT (2011-2012). The country has...

-The Hindu Business Line   The general tendency among Indian policy makers currently is to blame international price movements for the rise in prices of essential food items in India. The extent to which this claim is valid is assessed by examining the specific case of wheat. It is no secret that Indian food prices are increasingly affected by international prices. Ever since 2002, when all quantitative restrictions on Indian imports of agricultural...

-The Business Standard It will make the coercive powers of the land acquisition law irrelevant, though including it in the central Bill would be unconstitutional The proposal to amend the central Land Acquisition Bill to provide for leasing of land rather than acquiring it is just not constitutionally feasible. Land is a state subject and the Centre cannot legislate on leasing at all. But as an idea it is great and should...