-The Business Standard Chhattisgarh proves no cash transfer or UID is needed to make PDS work Viewed from a ration shop in Surguja in the largely poor tribal north of Chhattisgarh, the arguments for and against the food security Bill seem way off the mark. We had travelled there to see first-hand Chhattisgarh's much-celebrated transformation of its broken, corrupt public distribution system (a recent survey found that wastage of PDS grain dropped...

-NDTV The UPA government's ambitious Food Security Bill finally seems to be getting off the ground at a whopping cost of Rs. 1.25 lakh crore. With constant disruptions by the Opposition in Parliament resulting in a delay in passing the Food Security Bill, the government has decided to not wait any longer. The cabinet will today promulgate an ordinance to push through the bill, which is the brainchild of Congress president Sonia...

-The Hindu Switching to renewable energy sources in the country's midday meal programme will save millions of rupees. But only a few kitchens are doing anything about it, says the author. This is a story of facts and figures and sheer size. Of an auditorium-sized room dense with hot steam from cooking. Of seven tonnes of cooked rice and four tanker-loads of steaming sambar that needed 70 pairs of hands for cutting...

-The Hindu Bangalore: The former Speaker K.R. Ramesh Kumar on Monday defended in the Legislative Assembly the announcement on supplying rice at Re.1 a kg to the Below Poverty Line families. Participating in the debate on the motion for thanking Governor H.R. Bhardwaj for his address to the members of both the Houses of the State legislature, he termed the "negative reaction" by the media as "inhuman." He said that the...

-PTI The Bihar government on Tuesday alleged that there was laxity by Food Corporation of India in taking custom-milled rice of paddy (CMR) procured by the state and decided to draw the attention of the Centre to it. "Despite assurance of senior officers of FCI on taking CMR, laxity could be seen among corporation officials," Bihar Food minister Shayam Rajak said. He told a review meeting of his department that the FCI...