-The Hindu   India will support the removal of food export restrictions for humanitarian purposes during the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in Washington later this week. The Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, will attend the two-day meeting on September 23-24. According to the agenda note prepared for the meeting, India has welcomed the recommendations of the Development Working Group (DWG) of the Agriculture ministerial. One of these...

Studies by the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Academic Forum on food security issues in the three countries suggest that providing food access works best when backed by cash transfers. A paper on food security brought out by the UNDP’s Brasilia-based International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG), under the Forum, shows that despite the great strides in food production made by India people in this country are just not eating enough. Citing indices...

-The Business Standard   Demand-side control cannot be an answer beyond a point to India’s persistently high food price inflation, the World Bank said on Monday. Consumer price-based food inflation in India has been at 10-20 per cent for quite a long while, noted its report on ‘Food inflation in South Asia’. The Bank’s chief economist for the region, Kalpana Kochhar, said controlling inflation in India was a difficult job for the Reserve Bank...

-The Telegraph   The Centre tonight banned onion exports to check rising retail prices, re-imposing the curbs only six months after it lifted them following a dip. At the same time, it lifted four-year restrictions on overseas sale of wheat and non-basmati rice to ease storage problems following record production last season. “Onion exports have been banned with immediate effect. The ban will be reviewed on a fortnightly basis,” food minister K.V. Thomas said...

The flawed Bill on food security has not received the kind of publicity that the Lokpal Bill has, but that does not diminish its significance. “THIS government has divided everything and everyone. There are different cards for different sections of the poor. If my employer, taking pity on me, gives me an old television, I am not entitled to a yellow card [Below Poverty Line card]. My son who is...