Centre delinks access to welfare schemes from poverty line NUMBER of people who can benefit from government’s welfare programmes is going to swell. Currently, the Central government caps the entitlements under most welfare programmes to those below the poverty line, which is as low as Rs 12/day/person for rural areas and Rs 18/day/person for urban areas. State governments have been opposing this mechanism. In future, the ongoing socio-economic and caste census...

-The Financial Express   Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar on Wednesday said the proposed food security Act should target only needy sections of society for Nutritional cover, citing an adverse impact on economy in case its ambit is widened — a stance contrary to the draft bill approved by the empowered group of ministers (EGoM) in July. The draft bill provides for the supply of subsidised coarse cereals for nutrional food security to the...

The Supreme Court commissioners in the food case have warned the Union government that their draft National Food Security Act falls foul of apex court orders on providing food and Nutrition to the needy.  In a letter to the government, the principal adviser to the office of commissioners, Biraj Patnaik, noted that the draft violated several existing orders of the Supreme Court. He said the apex court explicitly banned the role...

-The United Nations   The United Nations and international figures marked World Food Day today with calls for immediate aid and longer-term solutions, and warnings of factors that keep hundreds of millions mired in hunger, such as price swings and gender discrimination. In a message delivered to a ceremony at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters in Rome, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed that there is more than enough food on the...

-Live Mint   As United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi prepares to intervene next week in the great national debate about who is poor, she might want to visit north-eastern Mumbai to see how the poorest are not even classified as such and how a giant government scheme to save their children from malNutrition is failing. The nauseating stench from a mountain of garbage greets a visitor to Rafi Nagar at the base...