A ministers' panel meeting tomorrow is likely to consider raising poor families' entitlement for rice or wheat to 35 kg per month at Rs 3 a kg. The Empowered Group of Ministers of Food, headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, earlier on March 18 cleared the Food Security Bill, which provided poor families right to 25 kg of the foodgrain in a month . The EGoM is revisiting the bill, the ambitious...

For no fault of theirs, the poor have given the government much trouble. Unlike Blacks or Women, two other classes of people chosen often for favours, the poor do not distinguish themselves; and if they are identified by means of external criteria, their characteristics can be faked or forged. The temptation to do so becomes overwhelming when the government gives favours — rations, jobs, places in schools, medical treatment —...

Poverty attracts two kinds of policy interventions. The first hopes to eradicate it and the second wants to keep the poor alive. In India, our prime effort has always been, right from the days of antodaya, to somehow keep the poor ticking, even at the lowest levels of subsistence. The NREGA scheme saves the impoverished from starvation on a six-monthly basis. We see the same mindset at work in the...

The draft food security legislation readied for cabinet’s approval is much narrower in scope than what was initially envisaged and, hence, stops short of assuring an entitlement as had been previously pledged. The final draft Bill which has been approved by the empowered group of ministers (eGoM) and reviewed by Mint restricts coverage only to poor citizens, confines it to the supply of 25kg of wheat and rice, does not lock...

The draft food security bill studiedly sidesteps the real problem An offending official disconnect with the hungry millions of India has been perpetrated by the very group aiming to improve their lot. In the minutes of its meeting of March 12, the empowered Group of Ministers, which cleared a draft food security bill for consideration of the Union cabinet, recorded this audacious passage: “The definition of food security should be limited...