The maid squirrels away your leftovers to take home to her family, you obsess about portion control; she worries about getting her ration card, or about making it to the ration store in time, you worry about your kid eating junk while you are at work; she makes ragi mudde at home, and looks at your basmati rice, you look at your basmati rice and ask her how to cook ragi… As the bard says in the Merchant of Venice, they are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing.
This issue is about equilibrium in the world of food– about weighing the choices between organic and inorganic, about buying local versus global, about eating junk versus eating wholesome, about being vegetarian or not…
To understand the nuances of “what is on your table tonight” we look at fundamental questions - Where and how was the food grown or kept, how many food miles did it travel, how was it processed, how distributed, how planned for, how wasted? We look at how these questions affect the land, environment, the consumer, the farmer and the policy makers.

In this issue...

• A closer look at PDS in Karnataka – what works and what doesn’t
• What it takes to bring farm fresh organic produce to your doorstep
• Food “Miles” you don’t want to earn
• Time to put the chickens before the eggs? – a look at the factory farming system in India and alternatives
• Kathyayini Chamraj, senior development journalist, on why “universal”, “right” and “food” are but placebos in the Food Security Act,
• Seetha Ananthasivan from Bhoomi Network, on going back to basics of eating,
• Increasing your food karma,