Every passing day makes it clear that the proposed food security law may not come by for a while. One report quoting the Planning Commission even suggested that it can be expected only in 2012. This Twelfth Plan (2012-17) launch has support from the concerned dual Ministry of Agriculture as well as Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution. In that eventuality it does mean a surge in food insecurity.A dispassionate...
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Unorganised sector a major challenge: Kharge
Union Minister for Labour and Employment Mallikarjun Kharge said the major challenge facing India today was that of the unorganised sector. He was speaking at the second World Social Security Summit organised by the International Social Security Association in Capetown, South Africa, on Friday. Mr. Kharge is heading a six-member high-level delegation from India, which held discussions with several Labour Ministers of the nearly 120 countries participating in the meet. Mr. Kharge...
More »Indian State Empowers Poor to Fight Corruption by Lydia Polgreen
The village bureaucrat shifted from foot to foot, hands clasped behind his back, beads of sweat forming on his balding head. The eyes of hundreds of wiry village laborers, clad in dusty lungis, were fixed upon him. A group of auditors, themselves villagers, read their findings. A signature had been forged for the delivery of soil to rehabilitate farmland. The soil had never arrived, and about $4,000 was missing. The...
More »Food Security Sans PDS: Universalization Through Targeting? by Smita Gupta
The case of the Food Security Bill gets curiouser and curiouser. What started off as a fight between universalization and targeting has ended (or so it would seem) in a complete victory in the National Advisory Council, Government of India (NAC) for targeting through universalization (if such a thing was possible), with the honourable exception of Prof Jean Dreze, who has to be commended for his ‘note of disagreement’. On...
More »Nabard objects to proposal on business houses taking over RRBs by Dinesh Unnikrishnan
Even before the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) finalizes the guidelines for handing out new bank licences, its draft proposal has evoked unease in the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), which oversees the country’s 82 regional rural banks (RRBs). Nabard has taken exception to the banking regulator’s proposal to allow industrial houses to take over RRBs and convert them into full-fledged banks, saying such a move could dilute...
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