-The Economic Times All public data-from that on glacier meltdowns to monsoon charts to benami land--will be freely available at the click of a mouse with the launch of a national data portal next month. Modeled on US chief information officer Vivek Kundra's Data.gov.us project, the science and technology ministry's portal-- data.gov.in--aims to democratize data, and make the government more "open". "We plan to launch data.gov.in by next month. Once the National...
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Parliamentary Committee questions move to introduce Food Bill
-The Economic Times The Parliamentary Standing Committee on finance has questioned the government's move to introduce a right to food bill when it did not have a single, widely-accepted definition of the poor. The "criteria of identification of the poor remains nebulous," the Yashwant Sinha-headed committee has observed. The proposed food security bill, seen as the largest such legislation anywhere in the world, hinges on the definition of the poor. The...
More »Food Security: Messy Jam, But Here’s a Map by Ashok Gulati
Ensuring food security to all is one of India’s top policy agendas today. Given a large mass of poverty in the country, it is not surprising and no one would perhaps disagree with the need to achieve this as soon as possible. But the varied policy instruments that can be used towards achieving this goal draw sharp differences among the stakeholders. What is food security? The World Food Summit of 1996...
More »NAC sticks to its stand, finalises draft food security bill by Nitin Sethi
The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council stood its ground on Wednesday and gave the go-ahead to an expansive Food Security Bill. Not relenting to the position the Prime Minister's Office and the Planning Commission had taken against a bill that could lead to a surge in subsidy, the NAC finalized the draft along the lines of the framework it had made public earlier. The government was expected to table its...
More »AG cited CBI intel job to back RTI exemption by Maneesh Chhibber
Attorney General Goolam Vahanvati vetted the Centre’s plan to take the CBI out of the purview of the RTI Act on the ground that it was also involved in intelligence-gathering as well as safeguarding the country’s economic security. And the government cited this opinion to overrule senior functionaries, including some members of the Committee of Secretaries headed by Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar, who had cautioned against such a move. Now,...
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