Thiruvoipati Nandakumar How is better delivery expected by allocating more foodgrains, when the system is not equipped to handle even the current level of allocation? The debate about the proposed national food security act seems to be centred on the magnitude of the allocation of food grains. But the issue is far beyond only foodgrains. It is about improving health, sanitation and nutrition standards so that India’s human development goals can be...

The class bias in government policy is clear in the decision to release a small amount of foodgrain in the open market to tackle inflation. MOST people would agree that there is a strong element of speculation underlying the current inflation and that forward trading contributes to it. Yet the government, though it has banned forward trading in certain commodities under public pressure, is curiously reluctant to see this point....

Expressing his "helplessness" on high food inflation, Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar today said the farmers must get right value for their produce so that they are encouraged to increase production of essential farm commodities to rein in price rise. He, however, said that it was states' responsibility to ensure proper distribution of food grains to the people through ration shops while the Centre is responsible for production, procurement and moving...

Illegality in India today touches almost every economic activity. It is both systemic and systematic. The Indian ruling class faced its severest crisis of credibility in 2010. Its past caught up with it and skeletons and scams were spilling out of its closets. The scams have a symbiotic relationship with the black economy. The number of scams is growing and so is the size of the black economy, which has reached...

The National Advisory Council (NAC) had been widely credited with framing three pro-people legislations — the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the Right to Information (RTI) and the Forest Rights Act — under the UPA 1 government. So when NAC 2 began discussions on the Food Security Act in mid-2010, expectations were high. The initial vision of an act with a universal public distribution system (PDS), extensive children's entitlements...