-The Telegraph At present, India has 195 million households with ration cards (nearly 794 million people), lower than the beneficiaries we intended to target in 2013 Inordinate delays in carrying out the census exercise are depriving millions of Indians who rely on rations for their subsistence. The exclusion of the poorest from the public distribution system in the pre and post-pandemic years was first flagged by the economists, Jean Drèze and Reetika...

-Newsclick.in Meanwhile, output has also dipped due to weather ravages, which hints at tough times in coming months. Strange as it may sound but rice and wheat allocation for distribution through various welfare schemes has been steadily dipping in the past several years. It is strange because the population is growing and even the Supreme Court has urged the Central government to revise its population norms for food grain allocation since these...

-Press release by by Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA-Kisan Swaraj) and the Right To Food Campaign (RTFC) dated June 20, 2022 Raipur/ New Delhi: Activists of Right to Food Campaign (RTFC) and Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) urged the Chhattisgarh government to abandon its rice fortification interventions. They appealed to the state government that it should not get coerced into distributing fortified rice in the food schemes...

-Newsclick.in Experts worry that with the government aggressively promoting a "singular reductionist corporate-controlled silver bullet solution" like fortified rice, a myriad of diverse local and natural solutions will get neglected and even eroded. Synthetic fortification of rice is not proven to be effective and can be toxic to many Indians, according to a report prepared by the Right to Food Campaign. The report was released following a three-day fact-finding visit to Jharkhand...

-Down to Earth Only 15 states procure rice, 8 procure wheat as part of decentralised distribution scheme  Only 23 states have implemented the Decentralized Procurement Scheme (DCP) so far — 15 to procure rice and eight to procure wheat — despite the scheme being in place for 23 years.   This was flagged by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution (Standing Committee) in a realease dated August 13,...