The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) on Wednesday moved a step closer to introducing its ambitious food security legislation after the coalition’s political leadership agreed to restrict the proposed universal public distribution system (PDS) to the poorest of the poor in the initial phase. Members of the National Advisory Council, or NAC, which serves as the political interface between the government and the Congress party and is chaired by Congress president...

A sustainable population stabilisation strategy needs to be embedded in a rights-based and gender-sensitive local community needs-led approach. An authoritarian top-down target approach is not the answer. The evolution of government-led population stabilisation efforts in India goes back to the start of the five year development plans in 1951-52. A national programme was launched, which emphasised ‘family planning' to the extent necessary to reduce birth rates to stabilise the population at...

Mokhada, Maharashtra: In the last 15-16 years, Jhaluriben Baria has had eight children, two of whom died within five days of their birth. Her youngest child Heera Gopabhai Baria, a boy, is seven months old. The infant is ensconced in a plastic sack strung across two sticks at the entrance of their house in Panchyasan village in Devgadh Baria block of Dahod district, Gujarat. Playing alongside is his sister, Premilaben Baria....

The planned National Food Security Act represents a unique opportunity to achieve gains with respect to the public distribution system. However, the current draft is a non-starter. When I first visited Surguja district in Chhattisgarh nearly 10 years ago, it was one of those areas where the Public Distribution System (PDS) was virtually non-functional. I felt constrained to write, at that time, that “the whole system looks like it has been...

The Planning Commission today decided in favour of pumping nearly Rs 14,000 crore into social and physical infrastructure building in some 35 Maoist-hit districts. The plan, formulated at the request of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, will focus on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme, rural roads, health, rural electricity, universal elementary education, child nutrition and health and new residential schools called ashram schools. Later this month, the action plan will be placed...