In the first example of his intention to take “difficult decisions” to contain the ballooning subsidy burden to control the fiscal deficit, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday denied permission to food minister KV Thomas for about 26.5 million tonnes of additional food grain allocation to states at subsidised rates over the normal allocation that would have cost the exchequer Rs 32,794 crore of food subsidy.

New Delhi Cutting across party lines, most state governments have objected to the National Food Security Bill proposed by the Centre, which is likely to be tabled in the Winter Session of Parliament.

Their objections range from seeking powers to decide on criteria that would make a person eligible as a beneficiary under the proposed law “so as not to encourage the existence of vagabonds”, to asking the Centre to bear the entire cost of implementation of the scheme, and seeking an “unambiguous” definition of the term starvation.

It was in January this year that Thomas was given independent charge of the Food portfolio after Pawar requested that his burden be reduced. So Pawar was divested of Food and the portfolio given to his junior minister.
Despite best of personal relations, the two have been sparring since. Consider this:

Sugar Exports

Under criticism from policy establishment for falling behind the private sector in generating and disseminating technologies suited to the demands of farmers, the apex body to coordinate public sector research on Agriculture — the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) — is planning to set up a company, AGRINDIA, to channelise its research efforts and output in a commercial fashion and respond better to the farmers’ needs.

In 2007-08, staring at a global food crisis, a nervous government banned export of wheat and non-basmati rice without bothering to create the space for the stocks the country would hold back.

Today, with the granaries overflowing, the government is struggling rid itself of stocks that it just cannot manage.

Thanks to the export ban and a bumper wheat harvest, the government is staring at 65.

Some of the major recommendations of the National Advisory Council (NAC) on the amendments to the Land Acquisition Act and the Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill are unlikely to find a place in the legislation being prepared by the Rural Development Ministry.

Amendments to the Land Acquisition Act, which took centrestage post-Nandigram agitation, are again under the spotlight due to recent protests by Uttar Pradesh farmers.

Though the situation is far better than last year, inadequate and erratic rainfall in the month of June has meant that water level in most of the reservoirs in the country is slightly below the average level expected around this time of the year.

The Indo-Pak row over the 330 MW Kishanganga hydroelectric project is getting more serious than New Delhi had earlier anticipated. Buoyed by the success in the Baglihar project, where the Indian position was largely upheld, New Delhi did not quite think matters would go this far when Islamabad first threatened to invoke arbitration proceedings.