Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday approved the final draft food security bill. The bill, when passed, will provide cheaper foodgrain to 75% of the population, or 900 million Indians. This is much higher than what a PM-appointed panel recommended, but is lower than the 90% coverage sought by the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC). To cover 90% of the population under a food law, the Centre will have to...

There’s no outrage when law, policy are outsourced to corporates IN order to get our perspective on issues of national importance right, we could do well to turn our ears from the din created by vested interests. The unduly vehement questioning of the process of concerned citizens (or “civil society”) engaging in legislative and policy consultations is exactly the sort of noise we must not allow to deflect our attention...

-Express News Service   Having resisted the export of foodgrain since taking charge in January, Food Minister K V Thomas on Wednesday said that he was not opposed to export of “some quantity of wheat and rice” as there is bumper production in the country. Thomas’s statement holds significance as he has been publicly speaking against foodgrain export, citing the proposed food security law. “Our department is not negative to the idea of...

Rather than shutting its doors on ‘civil society’, the government should be thanking its stars that the latter wants to make law, not war. Distributing tee-shirts with this slogan would be a better use of the government’s ‘hearts and minds’ funds than the integrated action plan to counter Naxals, or the army’s tourism trips to Pune for Kashmiri schoolgirls. The UPA regime has been unprecedented for the spate of legislation that...

-The Business Standard   Government today said the Land Acquisition Amendment Bill will include the recommendations made by Sonia Gandhi-led NAC, and once passed, the legislation will ensure that there are "no more Singurs" in the country. "The recommendations of the NAC will be included in the Land Acquisition bill...There will be no more Singurs. It will support the aspirations of the people," Law Minister M Veerappa Moily told reporters here. The Law...