-Live Mint The right to food campaigner talks about the importance of the Bill in an interview The National Food Security Bill (NFSB) is just a signature away from becoming law after being passed by the Rajya Sabha on Monday. It was passed by the Lok Sabha on 26 August and needs the President's signature to be enacted. Critics have dismissed the proposed legislation as a drain on India's resources. Dipa Sinha,...
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Santhali women caught between birth and death—sans medical help -Anumeha Yadav
-The Hindu Sundarpahari (Jharkhand): In Santhali villages in Godda, along Jharkhand's border with Bihar, many slanting stone megaliths that mark the community graves are those of young women who died in childbirth in recent years. Tribal families in the hamlets scattered in Sundarpahari and Poreyhat - many of whom speak only Santahli - recount desperate struggles for medical help when young women in their families in advanced stages of pregnancy experienced...
More »More bite, less to chew -Latha Jishnu, Jyotika Sood and Suchitra M
-Down to Earth The most controversial aspect of the food security law is the restructuring of the public distribution system to cover an unprecedented 67 per cent of the population, most of them in the poorer states. LATHA JISHNU, JYOTIKA SOOD and SUCHITRA M explain why there are winners and losers in the new dispensation and how states with better PDS will have to find huge resources to keep their numbers...
More »The unaccounted costs of targeting-Martin Ravallion
-The Indian Express A degree of targeting is useful in ensuring that policies are effective in reducing poverty. But we have to be careful how this is done. With the right policies, India has a good chance of seeing accelerated poverty reduction in the coming decades. As I have previously argued, this will require that India does a better job in reaching the country's many poor people through its social policies. However,...
More »UPA spend on key welfare plans dips -Pradeep Thakur
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Contrary to the perception that the UPA government has been spending more on social sector schemes, a financial audit of the Union government's accounts for 2011-12, tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, reveals that every year, the spending has been coming down drastically on most of the major flagship programmes - by up to 63% in some cases. The largest allocation in the Budget in the last...
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