Accelerating the process of framing a National Food Security Bill, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday convened a high-level meeting with his senior Cabinet colleagues to discuss aspects of the Bill and the recommendations made by the National Advisory Council (NAC).At the centre of the discussions was a letter written by NAC chairperson Sonia Gandhi to the Prime Minister on merging the Rural Development Ministry's exercise for identification of the...

In a move that might put the Union government in conflict with the states, the ministry of rural development has recommended merging the census to identify below poverty line (BPL) families with the caste census to accelerate the process of determining the number of poor, according to a person familiar with the matter. The caste census, conducted by the Registrar General of India, or RGI, is due to begin on 1...

Haryana, reeling under a skewed sex ratio, is faced with yet another startling fact – an NGO has found that girls are being "bought" and brought to Haryana from 20 states across the country. The state's sex ratio stands at 837 in the 0-6 years age group, its lowest in the last five years and second only to Punjab. In one case, the family of a girl from Bihar was paid...

While many U.S. residents prepare for their annual Thanksgiving feast Thursday, one in six are at risk of hunger – including a quarter of all children in the country. Globally, 925 million people, or a little less than 15 percent of the world population, is undernourished. Ironically, Washington's efforts to alleviate hunger abroad may be more successful than at home, analysts say. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's estimate last week that 49...

Three basic necessities of life — tapped drinking water, electricity connection and sanitation — together are not available to 82% of rural Indian households, a government survey has revealed. The three elements were key in the defining of India's new poverty line earlier this year by the Suresh Tendulkar committee, which said that 46% of rural Indians were poor. The poverty line was based on National Sample Survey Organisation report of...