-First Post Sonia Gandhi wants the chief ministers of fourteen states in which the Congress party is in power to role out the food security scheme in letter and spirit, and in quick time. Some media reports suggest that the scheme will be rolled out on August 20, which also happens to be the birth anniversary of Sonia's late husband Rajiv Gandhi. While there seems to be a great hurry to launch...

-Frontline Professor Sukhpal Singh, a faculty member of the Centre for Management of Agriculture at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, has been researching and documenting the process of contract farming and food supply chains in India for more than a decade. He is of the view that the small farmer is being excluded in the method currently in place, which defeats the very purpose of improving Indian agriculture. Sukhpal Singh,...

-The Hindu Six years after it was set up to challenge mainstream media discourse, kafila.org has not only provided an alternative space for critical writing, but also offered a radical model of editor-less, ad-free, voluntary journalism with a zero marketing budget Aditya Nigam, an academic and activist on the left, had long been frustrated with the nature of the Indian media. In 2002, soon after the Gujarat ‘massacres', he was a part of...

-The Hindu The hostility to the UPA's food security Bill from both its allies and the Opposition stems not from substantial objections to the draft law itself but from other political grouses The decision to bring an ordinance to provide food security to 67 per cent of the country's population was received with much hostility by the Opposition parties last week. The latter seemed surprised that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) could...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: India's much-delayed Twelfth Five-Year Plan is yet to be officially printed, but the Planning Commission has already begun asking states and ministries to start gearing up for the mid-term appraisals for this Plan period, leaving most of them bewildered. This Five-Year Plan started in April 2012, but the strategy document for the Plan was finalised and approved by National Development Council in late December that year -...