-Moneycontrol.com The government had tried to get the Food bill passed in Lok Sabha in the recently-concluded Budget session, but the debate on the proposed legislation could not be concluded amid din. Planning Commission Member Abhijit Sen today termed it exaggeration, the likely huge rise in government's subsidy burden on account of implementing the proposed National Food Security Bill, as suggested in some quarters. Introduced in Parliament in 2011, the Food Bill, which...

-Deccan Herald The very first announcement made by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on taking charge as the new CM is that the unit system under the Public Distribution System (PDS) would be scrapped and 30kg of rice at Re 1/kg would be given to each Below Poverty Line (BPL) household, irrespective of the size of the family. This is estimated to cost Rs 2,373 crore a year, almost double the estimated Rs 1,200...

-Firstpost.com After the UPA-II released its self-congratulatory 79-page ‘Report card to the People', National Advisory Council (NAC) member and leading social activist Aruna Roy has come down heavily on the government for its poor performance in the social sector. Roy, an instrumental force behind the Right to Information Act, criticised the government for stalling on essential legislations such as the Food Security Bill, the Land Acquisition Bill and the Lokpal Bill. Roy spoke...

-The Hindu   How a country like India can deny payment of minimum wages, she asks For the second time since it was created, rights activist Aruna Roy has resigned from the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC), this time criticising the government for not accepting the council's recommendations on minimum wages to workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), even as she thanked the council's chairperson for the...

Argumentative Indians are at it again! After sparring over the poverty line and the actual number of poor, India's renowned economists have fired up a fresh debate over the extent of malnutrition. In the earlier debate, the Planning Commission ‘reduced' poverty on paper disregarding NSSO and official committees, including the NCEUS, which determined that 77% Indians survived on less than Rs 20 a day. Columbia university economist Arvind Panagariya has...