Even as the government is pushing through Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s pet project - the National Food Security Bill - two key members of the Cabinet - Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar - today voiced their concern over crucial aspects related to the proposed law that aims to make food a legal entitlement. While Mukherjee’s main worry was the country’s skyrocketing subsidy Bill, Pawar’s concern revolves around whether the existing mechanism was compatible enough to implement the proposed Food Security Act.

Reiterating his opposition to the proposed National Food Security Bill, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar on Wednesday said it would be difficult to implement the law through existing Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS), which has a lot of loopholes. “Public distribution system involving the procurement, transportation, storage and distribution is extremely complex and this is what makes it vulnerable at every stage.

Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar today said it will be difficult to implement the proposed Food Security Act with existing distribution system and suggested massive reforms.

“I will be failing in my duty if I do not emphasise the fact that the Food Security Act will never succeed in achieving its goal in letter and spirit, if we try to push the same through the existing PDS apparatus,” Mr. Pawar said at a conference here.

New Delhi Officials of the food, agriculture and finance ministries will meet the state and central ministers concerned in a bid to thrash out objections raised by the states over the proposed Food Security Bill. The two-day conference that begins on Wednesday will also take up the creation of additional infrastructure for grain storage.

The Animal Resources Development Department, along with the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation, on Sunday commenced the culling of poultry birds at the Central Poultry Development Organisation (CPDO) in Bhubaneswar following the advisory from the Union Agriculture Ministry to prevent the spread of the avian influenza (H5N1) virus.

On the first day, an estimated 20,000 birds, including 11,955 chicks, were culled by four Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) at the CPDO, which has nearly 30,000 birds, according to official sources.

The sixth anniversary of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) saw the government promising reforms in the scheme, which has been criticised for delays in wage payments and depleting farm labour.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the scheme could usher in a second green revolution through land development and irrigation facilities. He was, however, silent on demands to extend the scheme to mainstream agricultural activities.

New Delhi The agriculture ministry is seeking higher budgetary allocation to ramp up the focus on farm mechanisation and sustainable agricultural schemes in the next financial year, as the country plans to implement an ambitious food security law that would put pressure on the farm sector to scale up productivity like never before.

The time has come to supplement the employment guarantee scheme with a food security strategy. And if we don’t do it now, we probably will not do so for a long time. As the economist Gunnar Myrdal argued, a lot of “scientific” economic and social reasoning is thinly disguised value prejudices and it is, in important matters, more honest and in fact necessary to explicate your values. Having said that, the debate on food security is taking strange turns, both from critics and proponents.

The government’s plan of ushering in a green revolution in eastern states doesn’t seem to have taken off in the country’s biggest paddy (de-husked) rice producing state of West Bengal. Till January 20, only 50 per cent of the total funds allocated for the state were released by the Centre.

Officials said a reason for the low funds was the lack of fresh proposals from the state.

New Delhi Close to five crore farmers have availed of the benefits under the national crop insurance scheme, which aims at protecting farming communities against crop failures due to vagaries of weather, pest attacks and diseases.

According to the latest data released on Wednesday by ministry of agriculture, crop insurance claims worth of R22, 135 crore have been settled till now for 4.86 crore farmers mostly from Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Bihar and Karntaka.