-The Financial Express For all its targeting, fake ration cards abound. The GPS tracking of trucks carrying ration shop grain and the SMS alerts were supposed to be unique ways in which the Chhattisgarh government had resolved the issue of pilferage of ration shop foodgrains. Once people were informed that the rations had left the FCI godowns and when they reached their ration shops, there was less scope for pilferage. Hardly surprising...

-The Indian Express For the first time, the interests of farmers, livelihood losers and SC/ST communities have been given high priority. After intensive and extensive consultations lasting for over two years, the UPA 2 government succeeded in getting Parliament to pass a historic new land acquisition law in September 2013. This law completely replaced the colonial Land Acquisition Act, 1894. The new legislation did not fully satisfy everybody but it came to...

-Live Mint India's principled stand seeking parallel progress on trade facilitation and food security agreements at the WTO is a right step While food security is a matter of national sovereignty (Mint Edit, 22 July), let us not confuse it with trade negotiations, as many are indulging in. Secondly, the World Trade Organization (WTO) issue is on production subsidies and not consumption subsidies, so it does not affect our poor consumers. India's...

-The Pioneer The Government must establish research & development and innovation centres at the village level, which can be instrumental in evolving solutions for the actual problems being faced on day-to-day basis by the farming community The agriculture sector today faces multiple problems, thanks to insufficient rainfall, falling crop productivity and failures coupled with low profitability. Climate change, air pollution, frequent droughts and other adversities have brought the farmers to their knees,...

-The Hindu   Obesity among children due to rampant consumption of junk food has reached epidemic proportions. With India already in the grip of this dangerous global trend, the government needs to remove its blinkers on the processed food industry One of the first declarations of the newly elected government in June was a proposal to ban unhealthy or junk food (defined as food high on fat, sugar and salt) in school...