-Kafila.org This statement was put out by the RIGHT TO FOOD CAMPAIGN on 24 January The much awaited recommendations of the Standing Committee on Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution on the National Food Security Bill are a letdown to those who wrote to the Committee urging it to ensure justice to the people of India.  The Committee despite taking a year since December 2011 when the Bill was tabled in the...

-The Times of India Indian households purchased much more food items through the public distribution system (PDS) in 2009-10 than they did five years ago, the 66th National Sample Survey has indicated, raising doubts over the effectiveness of the government’s new direct cash transfer system over a large base. Greater penetration and higher use of the PDS will make it difficult for the government to eventually deliver the Rs 75,000-crore food subsidy...

-Frontline While the broadcast media often arrogates to itself the right to speak in the name of the nation, catering to their “customers” in the process, intellectuals have a duty to question such practices and resist being co-opted by the channels. It may not be far-fetched to speak in terms of a new “mediacracy” riding the airwaves. The movers and shakers perched on the prime time news shows on television seem,...

A report by a parliamentary standing committee entrusted to examine the National Food Security Bill, 2011 has revived the debate on what measures India must take to end its abysmal track record of hunger and malnutrition, (See several links given below) despite successive years of high growth and record grain procurement. The draft legislation is likely to be debated in the upcoming session of Parliament, even as the recent Jaipur...

-The Hindu Business Line A leap backward, says Right to Food Campaign Food rights activists, including National Advisory Council member, Aruna Roy, have called upon all Members of Parliament and political parties to reject the Parliamentary Standing Committee’s recommendations on the National Food Security Bill. Tearing into the Standing Committee’s report, submitted to the Lok Sabha Speaker on January 17, the Right to Food Campaign (RFC), an umbrella of civil society organisations, said...