-Economic and Political Weekly Nandini Nayak (nandini@aud.ac.in) teaches at the School of Development Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi and is principal investigator of the research project on which this article is based. Shikha Nehra (shikhanehra92@gmail.com) is a graduate student at Ambedkar University Delhi and a research assistant on the same project. The renewed Public Distribution System (PDS) under the “rights-based” National Food Security Act, 2013 has increased access to foodgrains in Delhi. However,...

-Livemint.com All our solutions in agriculture, besides management issues, are going to come from science and technology, says Deepak Pental, innovator of GM mustard Last week, the environment ministry’s regulator, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), cleared the commercial release of genetically modified (GM) mustard, leaving it to the government to take a final call. If approved, it will be India’s first food crop developed using transgenic technology, 15 years after Bt...

-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...

-The Indian Express Urjit Patel has voiced concern publicly over the latest loan waiver — saying it engendered a moral hazard and undermined the honest credit culture. In February 1990, in the months preceding the build-up to the balance of payments crisis the next year, Madhu Dandavate, Finance Minister in V P Singh’s National Front government, announced a debt relief scheme for farmers to fulfill a promise made by the alliance in...

-The Hindu The welfare challenge lies in providing assistance to needy households to ensure adequate diets without creating conditions in which they opt for inferior diets that are too heavy on cereals With the Kerala government’s decision to implement the National Food Security Act (NFSA) from April, the whole country will be covered by the legislation. However, if we expect the NFSA to improve India’s malnutrition statistics, we may well be disappointed....