-The Hindu   The Finance Ministry had approved the changes in the draft National Food Security Bill that were incorporated after taking the views of the Department of Women and Child Development as well as those posted on the Food Ministry's website, Minister of State for Food and Public Distribution K.V. Thomas said on Thursday. The Ministry would soon bring to the Cabinet a revised draft after incorporating the comments of the Ministries...

Several state governments have come out strongly against how the centre has planned the resource mobilisation for the national food security law, a key initiative of the UPA-II government. States including those ruled by the Congress party has complained to the Union food ministry that legal entitlements for subsidised grain to a large section of the population as envisaged in the Bill would put an enormous financial burden on them....

With the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) insisting on providing separate legal entitlements to some sections — pregnant women, lactating mothers, homeless, destitute and disaster affected households — in the proposed food security law, the Food Ministry is set to insist on state governments sharing the cost to fund the provisions for this special category of Beneficiaries. Sources in the Food Ministry said the ministry has inserted “cost-sharing provisions” in...

The promotion of the PDS as an Aadhaar application would fundamentally alter its form and character. NO scheme of the Indian government would be transformed more fundamentally by Aadhaar than the public distribution system (PDS). The nature of this transformation appears to be taking the form of a virtual dismantling of the PDS; even if a skeletal fair price shop (FPS, or ration shop) system continues to exist, it is likely...

The UID in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act may simplify the administrator's task, but will not make a poor man's task any easier. EVERY time there is talk of tinkering with the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), it is time we recalled how and why the Act came into existence. The passage of the NREGA was Parliament's response to a people's movement that grew out of the recognition and...