-The Telegraph The government today introduced the Lokpal bill in the Lok Sabha amid protests by Anna Hazare’s group on the streets and the BJP in Parliament. While Hazare’s group dismissed the bill as a joke and burnt its copies, the BJP said that excluding the Prime Minister from the Lokpal’s ambit violated the constitutional scheme. As soon as the minister of state for personnel, V. Narayanasamy, moved the bill, Opposition leader...

The past couple of months have seen a renewed attack on the National Advisory Council (NAC). The NAC has been decried as an unconstitutional, undemocratic, “super-cabinet” where unaccountable “jholawalas” hatch harebrained schemes guaranteed to run the government aground. Another line of criticism has focused on the process of the formation of the NAC, its space within the Indian Constitution, and its capacity to influence policy. The two criticisms merge with...

-The Business Standard   Food security cannot be ensured by FCI and the existing PDS Successive drafts of the food security Bill seem to agree on one thing: a greater role for the Food Corporation of India (FCI). FCI buys grains at the minimum support price and distributes them through fair price shops and other food-related schemes like midday meals in schools and children’s nutrition as part of the Integrated Child Development Services....

Some interesting findings emerging on the Public Distribution System. A recent study of 100 villages in nine states says that leakages in the Public Distribution System are being plugged and diversion of grain has reduced, except in Bihar. The bad news, the researchers say, is that there are serious deficiencies in the BPL list. The study was conducted in 106 randomly selected villages in two districts each of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh,...

The government plans to pay `80 every year for three years to state-owned banks for each account they have for a beneficiary of the rural job guarantee scheme. This is expected to provide an incentive to lenders to ensure quicker delivery of wages under India’s flagship welfare programme. “We have made a proposal to the finance ministry that a public sector bank gets paid `80 per year for each MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi...