Indian Rice Export

India Permits Export of 75,000 Tonnes Non-Basmati Rice to UAE

India has allowed the export of non-basmati white rice to the tune of 75,000 tonnes to the UAE. Notably, the export of non-basmati white rice was prohibited from July 20 to check the domestic prices and ensure domestic food security.

The exports to UAE are permitted through National Cooperative Exports Limited, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade said in its notification on late Monday evening.

While amending the export policy, DGFT maintained that the export will be allowed on the basis of permission granted by the government to other countries to meet their food security needs and based on the request of their government.

Last month, India had decided to allow the export of rice to “meet the food security requirements” of Singapore.

West African country Benin is one of the major importers of non-basmati rice from India. Other destination countries are UAE, Nepal, Bangladesh, China, Cote D’ Ivoire, Togo, Senegal, Guinea, Vietnam, Djibouti, Madagascar, Cameroon Somalia, Malaysia, and Liberia.

India in September 2022 banned the exports of broken rice and imposed a 20 per cent duty on exports of non-Basmati rice, except for parboiled rice amid concerns about low production due to a fall in area under the paddy crop. It later lifted the ban in November. (ANI)

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Namibia India Jaishankar

Jaishankar Concludes 1st India-Namibia Joint Commission Of Cooperation

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday said that the roadmap of the growing partnership between both nations covers the domains of energy, infrastructure, food security, digital, defence and arts as he concluded the first India-Namibia Joint Commission of Cooperation.

“Pleased to conclude the 1st India-Namibia Joint Commission of Cooperation and sign its minutes. The roadmap of our growing partnership covers the domains of energy, infrastructure, wildlife conservation, trade and Investment, food security, digital, capacity building, health, defence and arts, culture, heritage and people-to-people linkages,” Jaishankar wrote on Twitter.
“I take great satisfaction at this first visit by Indian External Affairs Minister to Namibia and to chair the first meeting of our Joint Commission,” Jaishankar said in his address.

“The future of our partnership is built on the firm foundation of the immense goodwill arising from the shared struggle for freedom. In the last three decades, this has taken the form of a growing development partnership, stronger capacity building, expanded trade and initial investments,” he added.

Jaishankar said that a prominent example of India Namibia is the India Namibia Centre of Excellence in Information Technology which the Deputy Prime Minister of Namibia and EAM inaugurated.

“Our cooperation has also been expressed in domains ranging from health, education and electrification. Taking this to a much higher level has been the objective of the Joint Commission,” Jaishankar said.

Speaking on wildlife diplomacy, Jaishankar also spoke about the Cheetahs that were brought to India from Namibia.

“The reintroduction of cheetahs in India that were given by Namibia is truly a milestone, creating the basis for other initiatives. We hope that Namibia would join us in the creation of the Big Cat alliance,” he said.

Speaking on the booming Diamond Industry in Namibia Jaishankar said, “Our representatives of the industry take pride in imparting skills to their Namibian partners.”

The topic of the International Year of Millets also came up during the Joint Commission.

“2023 is the UN year. International Year of Millets. Prime Minister Modi has personally led the mission to increase the production and consumption of millets worldwide. This can become a new focus area between us,” Jaishankar said,

Digital delivery of public goods, advances in fintech, education, defence, and cooperation in arts, culture, heritage and people-to-people contexts were also discussed during the joint commission.

Jaishankar reiterated that it had been a very successful joint commission and a very successful visit.

He further said that it would further energise the strong cooperation including the United Nations, and the Commonwealth.

Infrastructure development, especially with regard to railways, roads, ports, electricity, transmission and water usage were also discussed.

Jaishankar on Sunday arrived in Windhoek to further strengthen relations with Namibia. He was received by the Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation of Namibia, Jenelly Matundu.

This is the first visit by an Indian External Affairs Minister to the Republic of Namibia. During the visit, EAM will call on the top leadership of the country.

Before arriving in the Namibian capital on Sunday, the External Affairs Minister was in Cape Town, South Africa to attend the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting. In Cape Town, the External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar invoked the three-decade-old ties between India and South Africa.

Upon arrival in Namibia, EAM Jaishankar in a tweet stated, “Arrived in Windhoek. Thank Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation of Namibia, Jenelly Matundu for receiving me so warmly. Look forward to a productive visit that takes our time-tested ties forward.”

On Sunday, Jaishankar addressed the Indian diaspora in Namibia. He said that the condolence messages and the outpouring of support that he received in the wake of the horrific train accident in Odisha show how connected the world is with India.

“A lot of leaders from all over the world and the foreign minister from here [Namibia] also has expressed solidarity and sent sympathy,” EAM Jaishankar said while addressing the Indian diaspora in Namibia on Sunday.

“I received many messages and foreign ministers and friends from across the world. The Prime Minister also received lots of messages. This is an example of how globalised today’s world is and how the world is connected with India,” he added.

Before arriving in the Namibian capital on Sunday, the External Affairs Minister was in Cape Town, South Africa to attend the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting.

In Cape Town, Jaishankar invoked the three-decade-old ties between India and South Africa stating that there is a very “deeply emotional” connection between the two countries. (ANI)

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Challenges to Food Security

3 Challenges to Food Security — Covid, Climate, Conflict: Jaishankar

Highlighting the three Cs–Climate change, Covid-19, and Conflict–which are impacting food security across the world, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Thursday said a concerted global push for millets is imperative to counter the challenges, increase self-reliance and global availability.

While addressing the High Commissioners/Ambassadors based in Delhi during the luncheon hosted jointly by the department of agriculture and farmers welfare and the ministry of external affairs as a pre-launch celebration of the International Year of Millets (IYOM), Jaishankar said, “I see three challenges to food security- Covid, Conflict, Climate. Each one has impacted food security significantly.”
Jaishankar also said, “Millets have increasing relevance in the world today in the backdrop of Covid, climate change, and conflicts.”

Jaishankar stressed that millets are important for food security as well as international relations.

To reduce the risk of the global economy more decentralized production and more self-reliance are required as well as “willingness” on part of the country not only to grow for themselves but to help each other.

He said COVID was a period that reminded the world what a pandemic could do to food security. He said climate changes can lower production and disrupt trade. He suggested that in international relations, much greater attention ought to be given to food security.

During his address, Jaishankar said that India is the world’s largest producer of millet where almost 20 percent of the world’s production is of the country.

“International relations started with food security. The fundamental urge to secure their own food and to see how they can get food from others. That is why we were keen to take the Indian year of millets to the International year of millets,” the minister added.

At the event, Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, who was also there said that the International Year of Millets (IYOM) 2023 will provide an opportunity for increasing global production, efficient processing, and better use of crop rotation and promoting millets as a major component of the food basket.

Millet is a storehouse of micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals. International Year of Millets will raise awareness about the contribution of millets to Food Security and Nutrition, motivate stakeholders for continuous production and quality improvement of millets, and attract attention to increase investment in research and development services, according to the ministry of agriculture and farmers welfare.

Asia and Africa are the major production and consumption centers of millet crops. India, Niger, Sudan, and Nigeria are the major producer of millet.

Minister of State for External Affairs Meenakashi Lekhi, Secretary for Economic Relations Dammu Ravi, Ministry of External Affairs Secretary (West) Sanjay Verma and about 100 High Commissioners/Ambassadors based in Delhi and senior officials were present at the event. (ANI)

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Because Hunger Doesn’t Sell

Hunger is a cliché from the past which no one wants to talk or write about, or show on screen. It is as if it does not really exist. Except in annual global reports, where the statistical index is too impersonal and distant. This is authentic alienation of the post-modern kind.

Even in the social media in India, this huge human crisis suddenly erupted when the desperate mass exodus of tens of thousands of migrant workers was out there on the highways and streets, like a scene from an old war movie, or Partition, or, simply, as the aftermath of a famine. For the mainstream media and society, hunger is hidden and invisible, like these great mass of workers, their faces, bodies and families, and their imagined homelands and infinite struggles, stoicism and suffering. It is hardly listed as one of the top stories in any daily editorial briefing, least of all in contemporary times.

Post liberalization, it  has been, in a systematic way, turned into a remote abstraction, as if it does not exist, with prime time TV shows, shopping malls, fast highways and flyovers, and swanky cars capturing our gaze. Hunger is neither a priority nor an attractive oral or textual narrative. It does not sell.

There is hardly any reporter’s notebook, camera or statistics which is choosing to capture the cracked mirror of emaciated intestines, or measuring the abysmally low calories, the mass stunting of children due to malnutrition, the wasting of bodies, and abject and rampant malnourishment or undernourishment, especially that of girls and mothers in poor households. Neither the hunger of the body nor the hunger of the soul is indeed measured by the post-modern measurements of progress and development.

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Satyajit Ray’s adaptation of Munshi Premchand’s Sadgati was not only about exploitation and feudal oppression in an entrenched casteist society loaded in favour of the upper castes. It was also about hunger, fatigue, prolonged malnutrition, hard, bonded labour. Ray’s Pather Panchali, also a story of stark poverty and forced displacement and migration, is also about food snatched from nature, just that bit to eat, and a sweet loving home full of memories given away to its ravaged future, even as a snake enters the empty house while their bullock cart moves away into the grey horizon. This was the cinema of realism, like the early cinema in Bollywood and its soulful lyrics and songs — life on the streets, homeless and hungry, life inside slums, sanitary pipelines, on footpaths. In black and white.

A still from Do Bigha Zameen

One decade before Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen, the Bengal famine across both sides of the undivided border, in 1943-44, and killed around 3 million people. If you see the pictures of the times, you might just about end up not eating for days. Indeed, there was relentless starvation, and universal injustice. However, there was also mass displacement and forced migration, huge unemployment and scarcity in both rural and urban areas, homelessness, and lack of sanitation, a slow and steady death.

So how are the vast millions of the jobless, migrant workers, the homeless, the landless labourers, daily wagers now living hand-to-mouth, their children, mothers and daughters in the unorganized sector of 93 per cent workforce in India without any trade union or fundamental rights, majority of them Dalits, poor Muslims, from extremely backward castes, and adivasis — how are they coping with the post-lockdown, pandemic reality? For all you know, hunger might kill more people than the disease, thereby becoming yet another invisible epidemic in countries like India. The slow, silent, unseen killer.

The central government, which cared little for the millions walking under a scorching sun after the lockdown, has declared that it has no real data on the migrant workers. Indeed, it says that it has no real data either on health workers, doctors and nurses who have perished as frontline Corona warriors. So when the government does not have data, how shall we document the local hunger index among the vast population of the poor and jobless?

The Global Hunger Index 2020 report released recently has ranked India at 94 among 107 countries. It was ranked 102 out of 117 countries in 2019. One year earlier, India was 103 among 119 countries. It is difficult to confirm if these statistics or rankings are based on empirical surveys. And, yet, this is widely recognized as an important indication of global hunger. China, Ukraine, Cuba, Kuwait, Brazil, Chile, Russian Federation, even Bosnia Herzegovnia, which were ravaged by war and genocide, are at the top in terms of successfully tackling hunger. Bangladesh, Myanmar and Pakistan have done much better than India.

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The Global Hunger Index is a categorical indictment of modernity’s alleged progress. It points out that so many human beings are hungry and malnourished — 690 million people. Globally, 144 million children suffer from stunting. At least 5.3 million children died before their fifth birthdays because of malnutrition.

Almost 40 per cent of children in India are stunted, a large number of them ‘wasting’ due to malnourishment. Almost 14 per cent are undernourished, says the report. Surely, the mid-day meal schemes in schools have played a role in reducing malnourishment and hunger, or MNREGA, during the UPA regime from 2004 onwards. However, the public distribution system (PDS) has been demolished, post liberalization – and it started under Manmohan Singh and the Congress regime. Economist Utsa Patnaik’s seminal study, ‘The Republic of Hunger and Other Essays’, is a testimony to this bitter realism. Surely, the current impasse of thousands of tonnes of food-grain holed up in the FCI godowns, is as much a ‘policy failure’, as was the Bengal famine under the British.

Several states in India have moved with positive measures. Kerala delivers food kits to poor households, post pandemic. In Bengal, before and after the cyclone, the government provided food across the spectrum during the pandemic. The civil society pitched in. The successful health and social security experiment in Dharavi, Mumbai, perhaps the largest slum in the world, is a paradigm shift in terms of efficiency and optimism.

Indeed, if anything, the deadly and deathly virus, should at least teach modern societies the importance of a healthy body and human being, who can withstand this killer disease. So how will the affluent society, the huge capitalist machine of excessive consumerism, and our mighty government, react to this hunger index?

Hopefully, with empathy, compassion, and a blueprint of effective praxis to end hunger once and for all.