Dr MS Swaminathan, NAC member and the father of India's green revolution talks to Rupashree Nanda on the food security legislation, the neglect in creating storage infrastructure and ideas like outsourcing food security issues. Rupashree Nanda: The main reason for the NAC climb down from the promised universal PDS to targeted PDS was the stated non - availability of foodgrains. Would you agree to that argument? Isn't there is not enough...

The much-awaited Bill on sexual harassment at workplaces gets the Cabinet nod for presentation in Parliament. ON November 4, the Union Cabinet gave the go-ahead for the enactment of a law on protection of women from sexual harassment at the workplace. Titled Protection of Women against Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill, 2010, the draft law is basically a new avatar of the ones prepared in 2004. This development has been...

The issues relating to the victims of endosulfan, sprayed in the plantations of Kasargod district in Kerala, have snowballed once again. “Earthworms emerged from the soil, and, subsequently, died. Then birds came to eat the earthworms and they died as well.”   “Some termites were killed in a cotton farm sprayed with endosulfan. A frog fed on the dead termites, and was immobilised a few minutes later. An owl which flew over...

Led by C. Rangarajan, it has been appointed by Manmohan In a significant move, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has formed an experts group chaired by the chief of Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, C. Rangarajan, to examine the recommendations of the Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council on the proposed food security Bill. The move surprised members of the council who met here on Friday to discuss the draft of the National Food...

Manual scavenging persists, but community and political mobilisation of workers has initiated change. Only those who are in denial are surprised by the continued existence in India of casteism and inhuman practices associated with stigmatisation, despite institutions of the state decreeing their abolition. But progress has been made in fits and starts, and agency – in the form of community and political mobilisation – has played a role in their slow...