-The Economic Times The revised, but not yet passed, National Food Security Bill (NFSB) represents a crucial political-economic approach to welfare. But how well do we understand the financial and, more importantly, distributional consequences of the revised Bill? Although the revised Bill is likely to simplify the identification of beneficiaries, financial implications will still be substantial. Calculating these implications must include not only the cost of food subsidy, but also additional costs...

-The Hindu   A concern about the Food Security Bill is that legal entitlement has been weakened to mean a passive right to receive whatever the state gives The hallmark of the National Food Security Bill 2011 is that if implemented it will translate into India's first ever right to food legislation, guaranteeing food as a justiciable, legal entitlement to its people. However, in its current form, the Bill fails to evolve a...

KEY TRENDS   • According to National Sample Survey report no. 583: Persons with Disabilities in India, the percentage of persons with disability who received aid/help from Government was 21.8 percent, 1.8 percent received aid/help from organisation other than Government and another 76.4 percent did not receive aid/ help *8   • As per National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4), the Under-five Mortality Rate (U5MR) was 57.2 per 1,000 live births (for the non-STs it was 38.5)...

-The Hindu In its latest form, the National Food Security Bill, 2013 promises to address the extreme irony of an ambitious nation holding mountains of food in storage, while masses of its people are undernourished or even starving. The right to food is finally on the threshold of being legislated. Every step taken to widen the coverage of food security schemes is an advance. Yet, the empirical truth is that...

-The Times of India The government has provided a back-door entry for contractors and the food industry to corner the lucrative ICDS food supply budget through the National Food Security Bill - a move that had seen controversy earlier too but could now become part of the law if passed by Parliament. In a footnote to one of the three schedules of the bill, the government has provided that children between 6...