-The Hindu   How a country like India can deny payment of minimum wages, she asks For the second time since it was created, rights activist Aruna Roy has resigned from the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC), this time criticising the government for not accepting the council's recommendations on minimum wages to workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), even as she thanked the council's chairperson for the...

-Firstpost.com After the UPA-II released its self-congratulatory 79-page ‘Report card to the People', National Advisory Council (NAC) member and leading social activist Aruna Roy has come down heavily on the government for its poor performance in the social sector. Roy, an instrumental force behind the Right to Information Act, criticised the government for stalling on essential legislations such as the food security bill, the Land Acquisition Bill and the Lokpal Bill. Roy spoke...

Argumentative Indians are at it again! After sparring over the poverty line and the actual number of poor, India's renowned economists have fired up a fresh debate over the extent of malnutrition. In the earlier debate, the Planning Commission ‘reduced' poverty on paper disregarding NSSO and official committees, including the NCEUS, which determined that 77% Indians survived on less than Rs 20 a day. Columbia university economist Arvind Panagariya has...

-The Economic Times The huge delay in bringing the food security bill to Parliament and the massive opposition to it have seen most states going ahead with key provisions of the proposed Bill, Planning Commission member Abhijit Sen tells ET. Sen has doubts whether the bill would be passed in the Monsoon Session of Parliament. Edited excerpts: * Do you think food security bill would be passed in the Monsoon Session? I am not...

-Outlook Patna: BJP today asked the Centre to remove "inadequacies" in the ambitious Food bill by increasing its coverage area and fixing all foodgrains at a flat Rs 1 a kg and suggested that it should be modelled after Chhattisgarh food legislation. "The UPA government should remove inadequacies in the Food Bill by extending the benefit to larger section of population," BJP national spokesman Shahnawaz Hussain told reporters. Hailing the success...