India's proposed food security program will face infrastructure challenges, Farm Minister says

"India's plan to roll out an ambitious food security program to give cheap foodgrains to the poor and malnourished won't succeed unless the government revamps a creaky distribution network and boosts other infrastructure such as storage and transport, Farm Minister Sharad Pawar said Wednesday," the Wall Street Journal reports.

The proposed law, which would create the approximately $71.28 billion program aimed at providing "subsidized grains to 63.5 percent of India's 1.2 billion people," "is being debated in parliament and the government is hoping to introduce it this year," according to the newspaper. "Howsoever desirable, Mr. Pawar said, the implementation of the law would need to be backed up with a mammoth effort to boost storage, wholesale markets, inspection mechanism and transport," the newspaper writes (Roy, 2/8).