Renu Devi is scared. The Planning Commission’s new definition of poverty will eject her from the set of below-poverty-line households, and her family will lose the right to 25kg rice and wheat a month at Rs 5 per kilo. The plan panel has fixed a cut-off of Rs 675 and Rs 870 as the monthly per head expenditure, in rural and urban areas respectively, for a family to qualify as poor....
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Violations May Hit Vaccination Plans by Ranjit Devraj
After a government report confirmed major ethical violations in trials of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccines on Indian schoolgirls, senior doctors are calling for transparency in clinical trials conducted under private-public partnerships. The report is yet to be placed in the public domain, but its contents were revealed early May by senior doctors who assisted in its preparation, sparking outrage among public health advocates and women’s rights groups. HPV is an umbrella...
More »Food Security Bill: Women made heads of households selected for food grain distribution by Binoy Prabhakar
In a radical departure from official welfare norms, the draft Food Security Bill has made adult women heads of households selected for distribution of subsidised food grain. This highly unusual move for general welfare schemes wasn't part of the original discussions on the food bill. The bill has shaped into the big daddy, or in this case the big mummy, of all welfare schemes by providing free food to pregnant...
More »Land acquisition: NAC's formula will not halt land wars, say experts by Kavita Chowdhury
The National Advisory Council's (NAC) idea about a uniformland acquisition policy - with the government being responsible for all public purpose transfer of tracts - has not found all-round support. There are no differences on safeguarding the rights of farmers and landowners. But experts say the most essential aspect is to put in place a powerful institutional mechanism for conflict resolution that will also supervise the process of acquisition. In the...
More »Mamata, Pranab to meet over land acquisition bill by Mohua Chatterjee
If the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council's (NAC) recommendation — to involve the government for 100% acquisition of land — is accepted by the Centre to formulate its Land Acquisition Bill, the UPA could face an opposition from its biggest ally Trinamool Congress. However, West Bengal chief minister and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee is confident that her party's stand is clearly known to the PM and the Centre will take...
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