New Delhi Noted agricultural scientist MS Swaminathan on Thursday urged the government to invest in building infrastructure for post-harvest technology before it implements the food security Bill.

Pointing out a huge mismatch between grain production and storage facilities, Swaminathan said for ensuring adequate supply of grain under the food security law, a modern procurement system needs to be in place.

Every third malnourished child in the State is from the Hyderabad-Karnataka region, reveals a study.

Bidar, Gulbarga, Yadgir, Raichur, and Koppal districts that comprise the Hyderabad-Karnataka region presents a shocking picture. Whereas the situation in Raichur is far worse than sub-Saharan countries and our own BIMARU states, the study notes. The HUNGaMA (Hunger and Malnutrition) report of the Naandi Foundation provides reliable estimates of the prevalence of severe malnutrition in 112 districts in Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Rajasthan.

Plans to use UID cards to reach out to beneficiaries, following successful pilot project in Alwar, Rajasthan

The government said today that it planned to provide direct subsidy to beneficiaries of kerosene oil and a pilot project in this regard in Alwar district of Rajasthan was yielding good results. "Direct subsidy on kerosene is planned in future...We have to move towards it. It will be done using UID cards... We are benefiting from the pilot project," Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas RPN Singh said in the Rajya Sabha.

What stops the government from using good harvests to reduce, if not eliminate, hunger?

It will be a while before Karnataka can expect any grant from the Centre for drought relief.

The Central drought assessment team headed by Parvesh Sharma on Wednesday directed the State government to furnish detailed statistics within a week’s time. The officials, at a meeting presided over by Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda, expressed dissatisfaction over the information provided by the Gowda-led all-party delegation in its memorandum.

BPCL, HPCL and Indane furnished a list of consumers with more than one cylinders

If you are one of those LPG customers, ‘enjoying’ the facility of more than one gas connection, here is some serious trouble coming your way. The oil marketing companies (OMCs) - Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) and Indane - have come together to weed out multiple gas connections.

New Delhi: Food Corporation of India (FCI) has warned that unless the government can distribute 750 lakh tonnes of food grain, there will be no storage space for the bumper harvest being currently procured, the food ministry told Rajya Sabha on Monday. The crisis of plenty has been engaging the government for a while as it is under pressure to distribute food grain to the poor or intervene in some manner to cool inflation, and the FCI alarm provides the clearest indication of the scale of the problem.

Food Minister K V Thomas on Monday said the problem of foodgrain storage was due to procurement exceeding targets because of record production and encouraging purchase policy, and assured the state governments all help in providing jute bags to overcome the “problem of plenty”. In the Rajya Sabha, he proposed an all-party meeting to work out a procurement policy to avoid such a crisis in future.

Stating that the proposed Food Security Bill is “inadequate,” Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat said on Sunday that the Left parties will stage an agitation pressing for the inclusion of everyone, irrespective of whether they are classified as below or above the poverty line.

“Every family should be entitled to 35 kg of foodgrains at the rate of Rs. 2 per kg. Only the rich should be exempted from this privilege,” he said, adding that at least 80 per cent of the people must be covered under the public distribution system.