-Economic and Political Weekly   The public distribution system remains the bedrock of India's food security system and the Food Security Act (2013) has only increased its importance. At the same time, the PDS administration has been subject to reform, change and experimentation. States have been experimenting ways to reduce leakages and maladministration. Since 2007, Bihar has used coupons to administer the PDS in order to curb leakages at the fair price...

-The Indian Express Mumbai: Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced Friday that his government won't cut subsidies for the poor, it has now come to light that the BJP-Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra has already silently discontinued the food subsidy for nearly 2 crore people in the state. According to sources, the Devendra Fadnavis government has decided to discontinue supply of subsidised food grains to 1.77 crore people who were...

-The Hindu Business Line To buck migration, the Barefoot College has turned to mothers and grandmothers to light up villages Satabhaya village, in Kendrapada district of Odisha, is barely 65 km from the district headquarters, but it can be called remote by any yardstick. Located inside the Bhitarkanika wildlife sanctuary, it remains deprived of basic facilities such as roads and electricity. Abutted by the Bay of Bengal, the village is the only one...

-The Financial Express With 66% of its population under the age of 35, India is home to the largest cohort of young people in the world-825 million. The median age of the country is just 27 years, much below 37 in the US and 46 in Japan. Numbers like these suggest that India has a competitive advantage over China and other Asian countries-a demographic dividend. But favourable demographics do not imply that...

-Down to Earth The situation of India's farmers has only become grimmer in the past decade, according to the latest National Sample Survey Office report The lot of the embattled Indian farmer only keeps on getting worse with the passage of time. In the last 10 years, the voluminous debt of Indian agricultural households has increased almost four-fold whereas their undersized monthly income from cultivation has increased three-fold. Even the number of...