-Live Mint The national food security law is in trouble from an unlikely source The outcome of the World Trade Organization (WTO) summit at Bali has been projected as a great victory for the Indian government by its spokespersons. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In exchange for a temporary reprieve on its food support programme, India has bartered away the bargaining chip of trade facilitation, which Western negotiators demanded. The...

-The Indian Express India faces no risk of violating its commitments under WTO The Indian delegation, led by commerce minister Anand Sharma, is approaching the WTO Ministerial in Bali with a ‘begging bowl'. The government has agreed to the so-called ‘peace clause'-a euphemism for not taking any penal action for violating commitments under Agreement on Agriculture (AoA)-proposed by WTO Director General but with the caveat that this will remain in place until...

-IPS News UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2013 (IPS) - Reducing the proportion of undernourished people by half until 2015 was one of the Millennium Development Goals that the international community set in 2000. It will not be reached: At least 870 million people worldwide - and one child in five - still go hungry; this in a world where we already produce enough food today to feed nine billion people in...

-The Business Standard The food security Act's provision for millets to every household is a magic bullet to attack malnutrition The food security Act has sought to address a nutritional imbalance in the public distribution system (PDS). The Act, by providing for a kg of millet per person at Rs 1/kg, would be a big step towards filling a wide gap in nutrition caused by the popularisation of cereals at the cost of...

-Al Jazeera   The reforms promoted by Prime Minister Singh do not go far enough to help food production and the hungry. The debate on the Food Security Act is based on myths on both sides. The government is propagating the myth that it is the largest anti-poverty and anti-hunger programme ever introduced anywhere in the world. The programme is being heralded as Sonia Gandhi's dream project, and billed as a miracle solution...