-The Hindu Press for universal public distribution system Right to Food Campaign—a conglomeration of civil society groups — on Tuesday held a day-long protest at Jantar Mantar here, raising seven questions with MPs on the proposed National Food Security Bill, particularly in relation to people going hungry when the country has surplus food stocks. Rejecting the proposed amendments to the Bill that might reduce beneficiaries and entitlements under the Public Distribution System (PDS),...

-The Hindu Stereotypical government policies and global approaches persist in family planning programmes. Urmila is a 40-year-old domestic worker in western Uttar Pradesh. The mother of six children, all girls, she is now pregnant again and is keen on carrying on with the pregnancy. Her husband is unemployed and is an alcoholic. His relatives have assured her that they will help her to bring up the child and have also hinted...

-The Hindu Business Line India can learn from Brazil’s Bolsa Familia and China’s Gansu Programme to make refinements to its MGNREGA scheme. The development experiences of Brazil, China and India provide a valuable opportunity to understand the relationship between growth and distribution over periods of high rates of growth. The growth story playing out in all the three emerging economies have resulted in large regional as well as spatial inequalities, between rural and...

-Frontline Health activists say the health chapter of the Twelfth Plan document exaggerates the role of the private sector in providing health care. The draft chapter on health for the Twelfth Five Year Plan document not only is grossly inadequate in its approach but exaggerates to unrealistic levels the role of the private sector in providing health care. It invokes the concept of universal health care (UHC), but, critics say, it...

-The Hindustan Times Under the cover of endorsing a proposal for the National Food Security Bill framed by an independent group of development economists, the government is all set to empty the Bill of any substance. Provisions relating to the Public Distribution System (PDS) will be reduced to a pointless reshuffling of existing foodgrain allocations to state governments, that too in favour of the richer states. And other entitlements, relating for...