-The Business Standard Govt's unbalanced food policy has disastrous results Consider the following discrepancies in the farm sector. The country is now the world’s largest exporter of rice, a crop grown with huge quantities of scarce water and heavily subsidised fertilisers. At the same time, it is the leading importer of pulses, which require very little water to grow and fortify the land with nitrogen to reduce the fertiliser need even...

-The Indian Express The Parliamentary Standing Committee examining the National Food Security Bill is considering to recommend to the government to do away with the categorisation of “general” and “priority” (similar to the below poverty line) households in the legislation and provide uniform food guarantee to 75 per cent of the rural population and 50 per cent of the urban population. Keeping in mind the fiscal implications, the committee is likely to...

-Forbes India A look at the crucial issues involved Over the past three years, India has vigorously debated the merits of having a Unique Identity (UID) number for each citizen and, allied with it, the move towards direct cash transfers (DCT) of subsidies (like food, fuel and fertilizer) and social security endowments, like pensions and scholarships. On January 1, India took its first steps towards UID-enabled direct cash transfers. But the move has...

-Pratirodh.com If Year 2012 earned the sobriquet of “Year of Scams’ due to serial expose of “super social cop” Arvind Kejeriwal, and the year-end tragic death of girl in Delhi gang rape case reminded us about the most ugly manifestation of ‘Republic of Patriarchy’ in India, Year 2013 promises to be a game changer for the fortunes of welfare state in India as well as political fortunes of UPA-2.   If Narendra Modi,...

-National Human Rights Commission The National Human Rights Commission organized a day-long National Conference on 'Right to Food' in New Delhi today. Addressing it, Mr. Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Chairperson, NHRC said that the Commission has always been concerned with the issue. Due to it's intervention, there is a lot of improvement now in Kalahandi, Bolangir and Koraput (KBK) Districts of Odisha which reported starvations deaths. The NHRC Chairperson said that there is...