If we get it right, the Food Security Bill carries the potential to alter the destinies of millions of India's poor and disadvantaged people, by assuring them as a legal right sufficient food to live with dignity. It was approved by the Cabinet after over two years of intense, sometimes fractious debate. Opinion in the Cabinet itself was reportedly divided around the proposed law. Gaping divisions persist, even as the...

-The Indian Express The Bombay high court delivered a telling summary of all that’s wrong with Anna Hazare’s India Against Corruption, as it refused their request for a discount on the rent of the MMRDA grounds in Mumbai, where they have planned a public fast over their dissatisfaction with the Lokpal bill. The court spoke up for the primacy of Parliament in clear, clinching terms. “We cannot allow parallel canvassing” when the...

A late-night crackdown by the police and paramilitary forces on anti-mega dam protesters in Lakhimpur district triggered raging protests at several places in Assam on Monday. The police arrested more than 200 protesters, who since December 16 had been blocking vehicles transporting equipment and construction materials, through National Highway 52, for the NHPC's 2,000-MW Lower Subonsiri hydroelectric project at Gerukamukh in Arunachal Pradesh. To protest the police action, five organisations, including the...

-The Times of India   Dalit Venture Capital Fund is the next big idea as the Centre looks to roll out 'procurement quota' in government purchases from small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The Fund would seek to buy equity in Dalit companies to provide capital support as investment. The Centre is mulling creation of a special purpose vehicle or a capital support system to help develop entrepreneurs among scheduled castes and tribes. The...

-The Hindu Amendment to provide for transfer of proceeds of foreign predicate offence The government tabled the Prevention of Money-Laundering (Amendment) Bill, 2011, in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. It seeks to introduce the concept of a ‘corresponding law' to link the provisions of Indian law to those of other countries and to provide for transfer of the proceeds of foreign predicate offence committed in any manner in India. The Bill enlarges the...