India's economic standing and its policy landscape have come a long way since the 1943 Bengal famine. History saw buffer stocking of food grains as a famine-combating tool. Today, apart from serving as an effective hedge in times of famines, such grain stocks are a conduit deployed by the...

The National Food Security Act (NFSA) 2013 combines and expands the scope of some existing food-based welfare schemes. It will be distributing raw rations, meal(s) and/or cash. Approximately 81.35 crore persons or 16.57 crore households are to benefit under the targeted public distribution...

Understanding the key trends and dynamics in the agricultural commodities market, especially for onions in developing countries, is critical for informed decision making and strategic planning. Onions are an important crop both domestically and in the global market, with factors such as timing...

Deficits in physical infrastructure, problems with availability of agricultural inputs and poor access to agriculture-related information are the major constraints on the growth of agricultural productivity in India. The more rapid growth of mobile telephony as compared to fixed line telephony...

Weather experts around the world are foreseeing a strong El Niño in 2014. In India, these developments are feared to lead to droughts. In the last 14 years, out of the four El Niño years globally, three resulted in Indian droughts. Since the 1980s, all the six droughts faced by India were in...

In many low-income countries, agriculture is mostly rainfed and yields highly depend on climatic factors. Furthermore, farmers have little access to traditional crop insurance, which suffers from high information asymmetry and transaction costs. Insurances based on meteorological indices could...

The study revealed the strong impact of policy measures on production, procurement, stocks and trade. We detected several market distortions and mounting fiscal costs. Wheat and rice supply strongly and significantly respond to the minimum support price (MSP). Wholesale prices at planting or...

The public distribution system (PDS) has been one of the main policy instruments of the Government of India (GoI) to provide food security to the people of this country, especially the vulnerable ones. The recently enacted National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013, also relies heavily on it to...