-The Times of India Leaders of four Left parties "CPM, CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc" on Tuesday handed over a memorandum signed by four crore people demanding effective food security law to the prime minister. Left leaders, including Prakash Karat (CPM), S Sudhakar Reddy (CPI), Debabrata Biswas (Forward Bloc) and T J Chandrachoodan (RSP) met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and urged him to bring a food security legislation in the ongoing budget...
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Food for all, by law not largesse-Akshai Jain
-Tehelka The National Food Security Act is probably going to undergo many changes before it is presented in Parliament. But everyone seems to agree that it’s time has come Towards the end of January, a few days after Republic Day and a little over a week after the Congress’s conclave in Jaipur, large half-page advertisements appeared in major newspapers: “Celebrating the 63rd year anniversary of our Republic by putting food on everybody’s...
More »'Food bill to cost 2.38L cr/yr'-Subodh Varma
-The Times of India How much would it cost the central government to provide grain to the whole country at affordable prices? A calculation by the Delhi-based advocacy group Centre for Budget & Governance Accountability (CBGA) puts the figure at Rs 2,38,471 crore for one year. In the current financial year (2012-13), the Centre spent Rs 75,366 crore on the food subsidy, that is, about 0.74% of the gross domestic product....
More »Abandoning the Right to Food-Ankita Aggarwal and Harsh Mander
-Economic and Political Weekly The proposed legislation on the National Food Security Act has been steadily watered down since it was fi rst mooted in 2009. The Parliamentary Standing Committee that examined the 2011 Bill has disappointingly continued with "targeting". If the government passes the bill incorporating the committee's suggestions, a historic opportunity to combat hunger and malnutrition would be lost. Ankita Aggarwal (aggarwal.ankita87@gmail.com) is a Research Scholar at the Centre for...
More »Food bill needs to be strengthened: Amartya Sen
-Pratirodh.com Speaking to an enthralled audience of 1,500 students and faculty at IIT (Delhi) , Nobel laureate Amartya Sen said that the idea of the National Food Security Bill was “a matter of appreciation and support”, and that the tabling of the Bill in Parliament was in itself a big achievement. However, he also drew attention to various shortcomings of the Bill and argued for it to be strengthened, particularly in...
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