-PTI After the big-bang reforms, Law Minister Salman Khurshid today indicated government's keenness to push bills on food security and land acquisition, insisting that even Mamata Banerjee will not be able to oppose them. He maintained that "the bills drive a deft political balance between Populism and reforms". "The draft (food security) Bill is being given the final touches by the Cabinet. This will ensure that poor will have their stomachs full. Nobody...

-The Guardian US leaders worked hard to tackle the 1930s drought and food crisis. Today they are supine, offering the hungry only prayers If you're wondering whether the US drought will create a global food crisis, the answer's easy. It's yes, because there's a food crisis already. The latest year for which we have figures is 2010, when 925 million people were declared malnourished. Soon after the number was announced, the World...

-The Hindu Shankar’s cartoon on Ambedkar and the Constitution has been discussed threadbare by now. The Thorat committee report has added more layers to the controversy. I would like to contribute to the ongoing debate in a different way — through more cartoons. Like most other contemporary issues in India, especially those related to identity and caste politics, this one too has conveniently assumed a complex, fudged nature, giving rise to three...

A rural Indian spending Rs. 22.50 a day would not be considered poor by a Planning Commission whose Deputy Chairman's foreign trips between May and October last year cost a daily average of Rs. 2.02 lakh Pranab Mukherjee's stirring call for austerity tugs at the national tear ducts. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has pleaded for it in the past and watched his flock embrace it creatively. With the Finance Ministry even...

As the government scrambles to contain the political damage from the Ambedkar cartoon, one may be tempted to believe that somebody surreptitiously slipped Shankar's satirical work in the NCERT textbook. Or that the HRD ministry was caught unawares by the political heresy.  However, the fact is that the books were released by NCERT after having been thoroughly vetted by a National Monitoring Committee appointed by the ministry which includes several civil...