The flawed Bill on food security has not received the kind of publicity that the Lokpal Bill has, but that does not diminish its significance. “THIS government has divided everything and everyone. There are different cards for different sections of the poor. If my employer, taking pity on me, gives me an old television, I am not entitled to a yellow card [Below Poverty Line card]. My son who is...

Eleven years after birth, Jharkhand is still staggering under the oppressive weight of multi-crore land scams — one of the most ignoble pulled off in the capital and the latest unearthed in temple district Deoghar — and it squarely blames Big Brother Bihar for this physical handicap. As many as 82,000 land maps belonging to the state are gathering dust at the Gulzarbag Printing Press in Patna, leaving ample scope for...

The government will recast the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, to give it a welfare edge, following criticism that it was disconnected from people's concern over corruption, high food prices and inflation. The attempt will be to make it more responsive to people's needs and increase earnings of the rural poor. The reform attempts to make the scheme truly demand-based, besides addressing issues of fraud, misuse of funds, corruption...

The absence of a law regulating surrogacy makes India, especially Anand, a top destination for couples from abroad. UNTIL about 2008, the future looked bleak for Sharadaben Solanki. A landless daily-wage worker in Anand, Gujarat, she earned a paltry Rs.600 a month. Her husband earned an equal amount working as a construction labourer. Together the couple supported three children and their parents. That was when she heard from Maganbhai, the owner of...

The Planning Commission has raised concerns over people migrating from the countryside to cities in search of jobs. The Plan panel says that this ‘distress migration’ is mainly due to delayed disbursement of wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, or MGNREGA. It has asked the rural development ministry to expressly strengthen the Business Correspondent model to make payments to workers under the flagship welfare scheme. In the...