An empowered group of ministers headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee decided to release an additional 500,000 tonnes of wheat and rice every month for sale to ration card holders for the next six months, according to agriculture minister Sharad Pawar. The move is aimed at reining in prices and curbing inflation and will cost the government an estimated Rs2,000 crore. The group met on Wednesday to discuss foodgrain availability...

A couple of years ago a colleague came into my office with what he thought was a definite typographic error: “It says that India won only three medals in the Olympics; that cannot be right — there is a billion people in India.” I had to break it to him that this was actually the most medals India ever won in a single Olympic game. India has an average of...

THE government will need to shell out Rs 6,000 crore more in food subsidy to support poor families under the proposed Food Security Act due to the revised estimate of the number of poor families in the country. Food subsidy will account for about 1.1% of the gross domestic product in the current fiscal year, compared with 0.9% last year, said a study by Deutche Bank. The Union budget has...

IN PATNI, a remote village in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh, sevenmonth- old Sandeep is playing in the mud. He finds a pumpkin seed in the dust and promptly puts it into his mouth. A tiny piece of cow dung, a pebble, a fallen leaf and finally the sole of a rubber slipper follow the pumpkin seed. For Sandeep and the children in the 300- odd families in the village,...

Even as the government tries to meet the expectations of the Congress high command on the Food Security Bill, it is still trying tricks in the economist's books to keep its food subsidy bill as low as possible. While the Planning Commission has now accepted that it would include community kitchens and existing nutrition security schemes such as ICDS and mid-day meal programmes under the proposed Bill, it is also...