The National Advisory Council, led by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, has come up with the muchawaited contours of the National Food Security Act. The NFSA, it is hoped, will become India’s flagship programme for tackling hunger and malnutrition, equal in scale and vision to the ambitious and highly successful Fome Zero Programme launched by President Lula Da Silva in Brazil. The UPA government is also hoping that the NFSA will...
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Parliamentary panel studies pros and cons of GM food by Devesh Kumar
EVEN as the fate of Bt brinjal hangs in balance, the parliamentary standing committee attached to the agriculture ministry has started examining the pros and cons of introducing genetically-modified food in India, with a panel of experts coming out in favour of setting up a regulatory mechanism to monitor their implications. At the first meeting of the parliamentary panel on the sensitive subject here this afternoon, three experts, including Delhi...
More »Will India's rising inflation lead to social unrest? by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
Earlier this week, India's opposition parties came together in a rare show of unity to take to the streets in cities across the country. They protested against the government's recent decision to raise fuel prices after it scrapped its subsidy of petrol prices in an effort to cut the budget deficit. Supporters of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party joined hands with their ideological rivals among the Communists to paralyse normal life in...
More »Why you must read this censored chapter by Raman Kirpal
A RESEARCHER WORKING on the State of Panchayats Report (SOPR) 2008-09 met Mahangu Madiya in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district, a dangerous place for gathering data. Madiya’s story was startling. In January, he was given Rs 55 lakh compensation for his land, but the amount is sitting in his bank account. He does not even own a mobile phone. “I am concerned with farming. My land is important to me. What will I...
More »The task of making the PDS work by Jean Dreze
The planned National Food Security Act represents a unique opportunity to achieve gains with respect to the public distribution system. However, the current draft is a non-starter. When I first visited Surguja district in Chhattisgarh nearly 10 years ago, it was one of those areas where the Public Distribution System (PDS) was virtually non-functional. I felt constrained to write, at that time, that “the whole system looks like it has been...
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