The argument within the government over how many people should benefit from the proposed National Food security Act just got more convoluted. The Planning Commission, in a meeting of its members on Saturday, will consider if the country can do with two sets of figures — a lower estimate of poor for the UPA's flagship food scheme and for allocating subsidy, and the Tendulkar committee number for other purposes. The...

Freebies for the IPL — at a time of savage food subsidy cuts for the poor — benefit four men who make the Forbes Billionaire List of 2010 and a few other, mere multi-millionaires.  And so the IPL fracas is now heading for its own Champions League. Union Cabinet Ministers, Union Ministers of State, Chief Ministers (and who knows a Governor or two might pop up yet) are being named...

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) will move a step closer to the realisation of its poll promise to promulgate a food security law if the Planning Commission, as is expected, conditionally approves the findings of the poverty panel report estimating the number of poor in the country at its meeting on Saturday. In preparation, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia met senior government officials and some members of the...

Reveals survey by Centre for Environment and Food security in 50 villages of Bundelkhand  “Dalit households not getting single day of work” “Scheme is a failure in the remote areas of Bundelkhand” An independent survey has revealed that implementation of the much talked about Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in 50 villages across the drought-hit Bundelkhand region has been rather tardy and mired in corruption with most Dalit households...

If you want to understand why the Maoists grow stronger, watch frail Shyam Charan Kisku, 5, as he keeps hunger away by nibbling at a wild berry called Kendu on a hot April afternoon. Kisku and 40-odd children in this scraggly village of mud-and-thatch homes, 180km south-east of Jharkhand’s capital Ranchi, did not get their free lunch this day under the national mid-day meal scheme, the world’s largest cooked-meal programme. Kisku’s mother,...