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...

'The creaky PDS will not be able to do the job.'  The recommendations of the National Advisory Council for the National Food Security Act, made after much discussion and many revisions, cast the net wide to include 75 per cent of the country’s population within the purview of the scheme.It is the most ambitious  food entitlement scheme conceived anywhere in the world and the conceptual and implementation problems are very daunting....

The National Advisory Council (NAC), which recently approved subsidised food for 75 per cent of population, has entrusted the task of drafting the Food Security Bill with a Working Group on food security for the consideration of the Council meeting, slated for November 26. The NAC working committee, while finalising the details of the Bill, will also look into proposals for introducing some reforms in the PDS system to efficiently carry...

All school children across the country will soon have unique identification numbers (UID) which will help in tracking their movement in educational institutions and academic records. This follows the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Union Human Resource Development Ministry and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) here on Wednesday. The system will help in tracking students' mobility by creating an electronic registry, right from the primary level through...

Will UPA-II's ambitious food security programme work? The issue gains immediacy, with the National Advisory Council unveiling a new draft plan envisaging legal entitlement to subsidised foodgrain for at least 75 per cent of the population. That works out to almost 800 million people. If implemented, this means the government's food subsidy bill will be far bigger. Also, our groaning public distribution system will come under greater strain. Now, central...