In the season of draft Bills, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council has come out with its draft of the National Food Security Act, 2011, that gives legal backing to the highly leaky PDS system, thereby excluding innovative options like cash transfers, which may have included variants like food stamps and UID-linked smart cards. Despite the PM’s panel objecting to universal legal entitlement, the draft says that “not less than 90%...

-The Hindu   This pro-MNC neo-liberal framework will hit Indians It's a ploy to push for more sops to MNCs The CPI(M) on Saturday opposed the move to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail trade and called upon political parties and organisations to protest against this retrograde move. The CPI(M) Polit Bureau, in a statement, opposed the suggestion by the Inter-Ministerial Group on Inflation headed by the Chief Economic Adviser and said...

To prevent starvation deaths and malnutrition To ensure that no starvation death takes place and people are saved from malnutrition as far as possible, the Supreme Court on Saturday directed the Centre to release five million tonnes of foodgrains immediately for distribution in 150 most poverty-stricken districts or other poorer segments in the country. Though it was a holiday for the court, a Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma held...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday expressed anguish over the high rate of malnourishment-related deaths in the country even as the Centre said that 50 lakh additional tonnes of PDS grains should be distributed among below poverty level (BPL) families by next two weeks. A bench of justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma repeated its earlier stance that if godowns were overflowing or foodgrains were being destroyed on account of other reasons,...

50 lakh tonnes of rice and wheat for all States/Union Territories at BPL prices Need to strike a balance between excess procurement and storage: Justice Bhandari ‘Whatever you procure, store it properly. The rest you can distribute to starving people' Responding to the concern expressed by the Supreme Court over malnutrition and starvation deaths, the Centre on Tuesday informed it of the decision to make an additional allocation of 50 lakh tonnes of...