-The Business Standard Time to question the assumptions behind the food Bill In the midst of all the politicking as to how and when the draft food security Bill will become law, one thing at least is clear: the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) intends to push forward with the much-criticised Legislation. UPA-II has little to show for four years in power, and perhaps it imagines that the Bill will somehow alter the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Union Cabinet on Tuesday cleared a Legislation to set up a long-pending real estate regulator aiming to protect home buyers from unscrupulous developers and builders. A real estate regulator - to be set up in every state - will ensure that private developers get all their projects registered with it before sale and only after obtaining all necessary clearances. "It will be mandatory for developers under...

-The Business Standard Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on the launch of the second phase of the Mukhya Mantri Annapurna Yojana, ahead of the Centre's proposed food security Legislation. Edited excerpts of an interview with Sanjay Jog: * What are the key features of the second phase of the Mukhya Mantri Annapurna Yojana (MAY), launched from this month? This will benefit 35 million people, including 5.5 mn below the poverty line...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The prospects of food security bill brightened on Monday with BJP saying that it was not opposed to the bill and urged the government to advance the monsoon session of Parliament. Congress continued to show urgency about the food bill with parliamentary affairs minister Kamal Nath saying that all options were open to promulgate the bill, which will mean an Ordinance route as well as a...

-The Business Standard NAC shouldn't have seen growth as the enemy of welfare For the nine years of the United Progressive Alliance government, the National Advisory Council led by Sonia Gandhi and including many well-known people from the corporate and non-governmental organisation world - mostly those with a left-of-centre perspective - has been the focus of much attention. The conventional narrative is that the NAC represented Sonia Gandhi's socialist instincts, and regularly...