-Tehelka While Delhi government says it will eliminate leakages in the supply chain of food distribution, activists say it will take away the rights of the poor who require food entitlements rather than cash When Chief Minister of Delhi Sheila Dikshit fumbled a bit in front of 5,000 people while delivering her speech at the launch of Annshree Yojna, the audience let out a collective gasp and began murmuring loudly. Dikshit had...
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How We Saved Agriculture, Fed the World and Ended Rural Poverty: Looking Back from 2050 -Duncan Green
-Oxfam Blog As Oxfam’s two week online debate on the future of agriculture gets under way, John Ambler of Oxfam America imagines how it could all turn out right in the end. It is now 2050. Globally, we are 9 billion strong. Only 20% of us are directly involved in agriculture, and poor country economies have diversified. Yet we all have enough food. Technological innovation has played its part, but increased production...
More »Millers’ market-Lyla Bavadam
-Frontline Maharashtra’s sugarcane farmers are a worried lot as the State government backs out from the sugar pricing process. Sangli & Kolhapur: KOLHAPUR and Sangli districts in Maharashtra form the heartland of Indian sugar industry. This time of year is generally the busiest, with itinerant labourers cutting sugarcane and loading it on to tractors that roar off to the more than 20 sugar factories in the two districts. In November and December,...
More »Sqeezing RTI out of shape -Jagdeep S Chhokar
-Governance Now While folks working with the right to information (RTI) were still reeling from the supreme court judgment on the appointment of information commissioners in the Namit Sharma case, came the prime minister’s speech on the seventh year celebrations of the RTI Act on October 12, again raising the sceptre of “frivolous and vexatious” use of the law. The RTI Act now seems to be suffering from what might be called a double whammy,...
More »Sleep on RTI queries, babus tell juniors -Christin Mathew Philip
-The Times of India CHENNAI: Seeking and giving information under Right To Information Act has been a cat-and-mouse game for citizens and officials since the legislation came into effect in October, 2005. Now, senior bureaucrats are giving crash courses to public information officers (PIOs) on how to delay or deny information to applicants. At informal sessions, officers coach PIOs - responsible for giving information under the act - how to redirect queries...
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