Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee took on the food ministry and publicly backed UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani's proposal to set up a new independent agency manned by professionals to computerise the public distribution system (PDS) as part of the reforms agenda and use the Aadhaar number as a base for the changes. Mukherjee was speaking at the meeting of state agriculture and food ministers in Delhi on Wednesday. TOI had earlier reported how...

-The Deccan Herald   Agri Minister doubts existing mechanism enough for roll out Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar on Wednesday reiterated that augmenting grain production and overhaul of the Public Distribution System were critical to implementation of the Congress-led UPA Government’s ambitious National Food Security Bill. “I will be failing in my duty if I do not emphasise the fact that the Food Security Act will never succeed in achieving its goal in letter and...

-The Hindu   The services will enable transfer, application procedures to be brought to one's door Last Christmas Eve, 35 people in a remote village of Jharkhand received a unique present. They became the first Indians to access their Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme bank accounts on their doorstep, having had their identities authenticated through their Aadhaar numbers. They are among the earliest beneficiaries of the next phase of the ambitious —...

The power of judicial review envelopes natural resource distribution The tsunami created by the 2G spectrum judgments of the the Supreme Court last week has almost mopped up the ripples they made in the legal sphere. However, they deserve respectful consideration for their discussion on two hot issues that have been agitating public mind in recent years. The first is the nature and ownership of natural resources, like air waves and spectrum,...

West Bengal: An agrarian crisis looms over the State as farmers commit suicide in spite of a bumper crop. THE topic of suicide figured repeatedly in Safar Molla's conversations with his neighbours a few days before his death. The 18-year-old marginal farmer from Kaltikuri village in Bardhaman district's Bhatar block talked about it quite casually, in fact even jocularly. Everybody in the village knew he was up to his neck in...