-Economic and Political Weekly The proposed legislation on the National Food Security Act has been steadily watered down since it was fi rst mooted in 2009. The Parliamentary Standing Committee that examined the 2011 Bill has disappointingly continued with "targeting". If the government passes the bill incorporating the committee's suggestions, a historic opportunity to combat hunger and malnutrition would be lost. Ankita Aggarwal (aggarwal.ankita87@gmail.com) is a Research Scholar at the Centre for...

-Deccan Herald As primitive tribes continue to be in a state of acute poverty, ‘schedule area’ status for settlements of evicted tribals from Nagarahole National Park will favour their development. The status will also solve the problem of representation of tribals in political institutions, which will help them benefit from the welfare programmes aimed at them, said Muzaffar Assadi, Chairman of the High Court-appointed Committee on Tribal Issues of Rajiv Gandhi...

-The Hindu The United Nations has been drawing attention in recent years to the growing burden of non-communicable diseases, which have been adding to morbidity and premature deaths in most countries. In a declaration issued at a high-level meeting in 2011, the U.N. argued that low and middle income countries should actively pursue public health policies that will reduce the incidence of NCDs arising from diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, and a...

-The Telegraph The world lauds us as the largest democracy. Yet, how much of a democracy are we and where must we improve? Elections and their consequences: We have regular elections. They are supervised with increasing effectiveness as far as booth capturing, bogus voters and violence are concerned. The influence of money has not waned; if anything, it has increased. It is not as it used to be, for paying voters only....

-Tehelka Feminism cannot be a moving force if it is not grounded in the lived experiences of its patrons I HAVE always been conscious of the inequalities of gender and caste. A series of matriarchal, independent women in my family had been asserting and stretching their roles in society even before I was born. My great grandmother, Neelamma, set aside her caste prejudices to get her younger daughter — my grandmother...