Giving right to food is not enough to deliver food, say speakers at a conference on food security Agriculture scientist M S Swaminathan has called for setting up a body headed by the prime minister for effective execution of the National Food Security Bill (NFSB) once it is enacted. All chief ministers should be members of this board, he added. NFSB was cleared by the Union Cabinet and introduced in Parliament in...

In a Bangladeshi folk story, a disabled grandfather is carried by his son in a basket, to be abandoned in the forest. On seeing this, the grandson calls out, 'Father, please be sure to bring back the basket. I will need it when you grow old'. Three thousand ageing men and women gathered in Delhi in the blazing midsummer heat to demand a universal pension for all aged people, not...

What stops the government from using good harvests to reduce, if not eliminate, hunger? For ordinary folk, a 3 per cent increase in food grain production over that of last year, combined with strong procurement operations and good buffer stocks of rice and wheat would be a cause for some celebration. It would be seen as an opportunity to tackle the widespread food insecurity that exists in India today. Instead, we...

-DNA Explain why more than 8.65 lakh metric tonnes (mt) of food grains meant for the poor under the Public Distribution System (PDS) have not been lifted between April and November 2011, the Bombay high court asked the state government on Thursday. A division bench of justice DD Sinha and justice V K Tahilramani, while directing the state government to file a detailed affidavit, said: “In areas such as Vidarbha, there is...

-The Business Standard The conflict between a universal and a targeted approach to social welfare which has held back the proposed food security law is now emerging in the ongoing movement for a universal pension. While economist Jean Dreze, who has been demanding universal old age pensions as part of a platform called Pension Parishad, has called for abolition of the Below Poverty Line (BPL) targeting system in all pension schemes, calling...