The NAC proposals for the food security bill are narrow and lack in vision. What is needed is a comprehensive bill with universalisation of PDS and a focus on child malnutrition.   There was much excitement when food security became one of the issues in the manifestos of most major political parties in the run up to the 2009 General Elections. With burgeoning food stocks, double-digit food inflation, stagnant malnutrition rates, declining...

Mining companies will have to start paying compensation to project-affected people right from the day a mining block is allocated to them and not when they start generating profits, a proposal that will further sweeten the deal for those who lose their land to industrialisation, but stoke more protest from miners. Once the project starts making profits, the displaced families will be provided an annuity income from the net income, but...

The government is keen on forging a partnership with IIMs, IITs and other select institutes for augmenting professional resource support to its rural development programmes like NREGA. As part of efforts to evolve such a framework, the Ministry of Rural Development has invited representatives from various professional institutes including IIMs and IITs to participate in a workshop organised by it in Udaipur district of Rajasthan tomorrow, a ministry official said. Union Minister...

In a first step of its kind, nine private companies have been shortlisted by the Union rural development ministry to develop infrastructure in the rural areas and maintain it for a period of 10 years. The project, envisioned as part of former President A P J Abdul Kalam’s pet scheme, Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas (PURA), will see these nine private players undertaking pilot projects in January next year...

The Centre should not impose conditions on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme which might block the project's implementation in the State, West Bengal Rural Development Minister Anisur Rahman said here on Tuesday. Talking to reporters at the Secretariat after a meeting with two senior officials of the Union Rural Development Ministry, he said, “No such conditions should be imposed due to which the rural poor are denied the...