Is the Government stepping back from its responsibility under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) by giving technical reasons? Civil society organizations, which struggled to enact the Right to Food legislation, doubt that this may be the case. It has been alleged recently by several civil society activists that the Government is rolling back the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY), which is meant for food security of the extremely poor households,...

-PTI Chief Ministers’ sub-group of the NITI Aayog agrees to reduce number of centrally-sponsored schemes from 72 to 30. The number of centrally-sponsored schemes (CSS) is likely to be reduced to 30 from 72 with a Chief Ministers’ sub-group of the NITI Aayog reaching a broad consensus on the issue. The panel has also recommended increasing the share of flexi funds to 25 per cent from the current 10 per cent. “There is a...

-The Hindu Two years after vociferously arguing for an expansion of the provisions of the National Food Security Act, the BJP in government is bleeding it with a thousand cuts, both fiscal and otherwise When Parliament passed the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in 2013, it had already become one of the most debated pieces of legislation in decades. Those for and against it had fought it out across yards of space...

-Scroll.in The government is yet to frame policies on how to tackle severe acute malnutrition but non-profits have started experimenting with community-based models. Nurses call him "the boy who lived." Severely dehydrated, unconscious and weighing no more than two kilos, lighter than a healthy new born, one-year-old Subhash was brought to the Darbhanga Medical College in Bihar in February. Admitted to Malnutrition Intensive Care Unit, he was administered glucose, therapeutic milk...

-The Hindu Business Line Not the RBI, going by the revised priority sector lending norms, which will further reduce credit to the marginalised Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often expressed his sense of anguish at the plight of farmers. In a recent statement in the Lok Sabha, he noted that the agriculture community’s problems were “old, deep-rooted and widespread”, and stated that farmers cannot be left to fend for themselves. Implicit in that...