-The Financial Express Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha have reported sharp falls in grain leakages through public distribution system (PDS) during the period between 2004-05 and 2011-12, according to an assessment by development economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera. In Chhattisgarh, which took several measures such as digitisation of beneficiaries lists, fair-price shops and GPS tracking of foodgrain carrying trucks, the estimated grain leakage has reduced to only 9.3% in 2011-12 from 51.8%...

-The Indian Express New Delhi: Bihar, along with Chhattisgarh and Orissa, have recorded the highest improvement among all states in the operations of their public distribution system (PDS), measured by the extent of grain leakages taking place. Development economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera estimate that only 9.3 per cent of the foodgrains channeled through Chhattisgarh's PDS network failed to reach the intended consumers in 2011-12. This is a substantial reduction relative...

-Economic and Political Weekly   A "high-level" committee makes half-baked recommendations which will rollback the PDS. A ccording to media reports, former Union Minister for Food Shanta Kumar recently disowned the National Food Security Act (NFSA) on behalf of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He explained, without blinking, that the BJP had just pretended to support the Act when it was being discussed in Parliament, for fear of the possible electoral consequences of...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The US today pledged financial and technical assistance to help India expand its renewable energy programme, monitor air quality over its cities and improve India-specific climate forecasts among new initiatives on energy and climate. A joint statement issued tonight after delegation-level talks led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama outlined proposed actions that could help India curb its growth of greenhouse gas emissions and...

-The Indian Express The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) released last week forced India's policymakers, yet again, to confront the unfortunate realities of our primary education system. In its 10-year history, ASER has challenged the fundamental assumption of elementary education policy: that the expansion of the schooling system would ensure that children learn. Indeed, in the last decade, while the Centre was able to expand the system through the provision...