-The Hindu Shanta Kumar panel favoured a drastic cut in beneficiaries The Narendra Modi government is not in a hurry to accept the controversial recommendation of the Shanta Kumar panel to cut the public distribution system beneficiaries for subsidised foodgrains to 40 from 67 per cent under the National Food Security Act, highly placed government sources have indicated to The Hindu. With several crucial Assembly elections in the offing this and the next...
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Just how leaky is the PDS? -Rukmini S
-The Hindu Why do we not have a clear answer on just how much grain is leaking out of the Public Distribution System? If you're interested in just what ‘leakage' means and how it's worked out, here's a little primer. So first: what is leakage? Since we know anecdotally that many households do not get all the grain they are entitled to, we can assume some is being illegally diverted. It's...
More »Slowdown in rural wages not a temporary phenomenon -Ishan Bakshi
-Business Standard While the revised estimates of the gross domestic product (GDP) suggest the Indian economy turned the corner in 2013-14, concerns remain over the durability of this nascent recovery. Particularly worrying is the recent slowdown in rural wage growth, which signals a weakening of rural demand. Growth in rural wages, which had averaged 18 per cent in the previous few years, fell to less than five per cent in September...
More »Food security: economists challenge official panel’s conclusions -Yogesh Rajput
-Governance Now Shanta Kumar committee recommendation to curtail PDS based on "motivated data fudging" A group of economists have challenged the government move to scale down the ambit of the food security initiative, arguing that leakages in the public distribution system (PDS) are not as bad as an official committee has concluded. A ‘high-level committee on restructuring of FCI', headed by Shanta Kumar, submitted its report to prime minister Narendra Modi last month,...
More »Food insecurity acts -Brinda Karat
-The Hindu The Shanta Kumar Committee's recommendations to unbundle the Food Corporation of India are in tune with U.S.-led demands raised in the World Trade Organization The Shanta Kumar Committee report, released last week, on a range of issues relating to procurement, storage and distribution of food grains is not only deeply flawed in its reading of the situation on food security, but also short on facts. It was prepared under the...
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