In its final recommendations on the proposed Food Security Act, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council finally has acknowledged the twin constraints of the budget and the availability of foodgrains by stopping short of “universalisation” of a government-guaranteed right to subsidised food. Given the NAC’s composition and remit, its recommendation is likely to influence the final draft. The NAC still leans in favour of spreading the targeting net too wide, and...

After months of public and internal debate, the National Advisory Council (NAC) — an organisation whose clout and significance derive from the fact that Sonia Gandhi chairs it — has put forth a set of recommendations for the National Food Security Act. The core recommendations are to provide legal entitlements to cereals for 75 per cent of India's population, that is, 90 per cent of the rural population and the...

The 3-1 conclusion of the POSCO panel that all clearances to the Rs 50,000-crore project be scrapped should haven’t come as a surprise to at least one person: Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. The panel’s report now wends its way through the Ministry’s official expert committees. For, Ramesh had handpicked these members and each of the three who opposed the project has, in the past, taken clearly stated positions on infrastructure projects,...

The National Advisory Council, headed by Congress President Sonia Gandhi, on Saturday settled for a much less ambitious National Food Security Act than it had previously agreed to. Scaling down its recommendations, it decided to recommend subsidised foodgrains for 46% of the rural Indian population and 28% of the urban population. The pruning of the recommendation had an immediate fallout, with the NAC member Jean Dreaze, face of the right-to-food security campaign,...

After the National Advisory Council (NAC) cleared the food security framework on Saturday, council member and development economist Jean Drèze issued a dissent note saying that “an opportunity [had] been missed to initiate a radical departure in this field.” “The NAC proposals [are] a great victory for the government — they allow it to appear to be doing something radical for food security, but it is actually more of the same,”...