India Will Provide Food For More Than 800-M Poor Citizens For A Year

India will provide food grains for free to more than 813 million poor people for a year at a cost of 2 trillion rupees ($24.2 billion), India’s commerce minister said, Reuters reported.

Photo Insert: A tree plantation in India

The scheme will run till December 2023, Piyush Goyal, the commerce minister, said at a news briefing.

The program merges two schemes, including one that started in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, under which the government was providing free or subsidized food grains to the poor, Goyal added.

India’s subsidizing its poor citizens contrasts with the failure of many Asian nations to provide food for people battered by inflation and low incomes, like the Philippines.

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