India’s fiscal policy is not supportive of monetary measures that the country’s central bank is employing to fight rampant inflation, the prime minister’s honorary economic advisor and former International Monetary Fund chief economist Raghuram Rajan said, while singling out the proposed Food Security Bill as a particular cause for concern. The Bill, which proposes to give about 68 per cent of population the legal right to subsidised food, will not only...

The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) has written to the Manmohan Singh government on the issue of manual scavenging: in a letter dated June 9, it has made out a case once again for a new law to end manual scavenging. The letter points out that in a resolution on October 23, 2010, the NAC had expressed its anguish at the official failure to end manual scavenging in the country...

Civil society” has dominated popular discussion for the last few months. It may be hard to recall how rare the use of the term was only some years back. In 2002, when I published a book analysing the role of civil society in preventing, dampening or inciting communal riots, I was asked in a television interview whether I was overstating the power of civil society vis-à-vis the state. And in...

During a meeting between Union Food Minister K V Thomas and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar on Tuesday, apprehensions were reportedly expressed regarding the National Advisory Council (NAC) coming out with its own version of the food security Bill. The government has been in the process of drafting the proposed Bill based on the recommendations of Sonia Gandhi-led NAC. While the meeting was essentially a consultation between the two ministers over various...

-Deccan Herald   The Central Information Commission (CIC) has pulled up the Prime Minister’s Office for ''casually handling'' a plea filed under the RTI Act that demanded details of the foreign visits undertaken by Sonia Gandhi as chairperson of the National Advisory Council (NAC). Chief Information Commissioner Satyanand Mishra expressed displeasure as the Prime Minister’s Office forwarded the RTI plea seeking information on the Congress president’s visits to foreign countries, first to the Ministry...