-The Business Standard The mid-day meal scheme cannot be blamed for the Chapra incident. It is a question of professionalising the administration and everyone doing his duty. N C Saxena, Food Commissioner appointed by the Supreme Court in the Right to Food case tells Sreelatha Menon.Edited excerpts: * Can the mid-day meal tragedy in Chapra be blamed on the decision to have separate kitchens for each school without a monitoring mechanism? The monitoring...

-The Guardian A landmark bill to make the right to food a legal entitlement is mired in controversy over its failure to address a flawed public food distribution system, misplaced priorities and exclusions India has an over abundance of food grains stocked in warehouses, yet millions of India's poor are left without food. Development practitioners and NGOs are in favour of disbanding the current food security system, the public distribution system (PDS),...

-The Hindu Uttarakhand reiterates that our rulers have contemptuous disregard for the advice of the best scientists and would rather listen to contractors and builders to whom they are beholden for funds In the early 1980s, while doing research on the environmental history of Uttarakhand, I sometimes visited the library of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology in Dehradun. Most of the journals in the library dealt with geology and earth sciences,...

-The Business Standard Food insecurity and hunger are rooted in bad policies, faulty design, poor governance and a lack of political will According to the latest Global Hunger Report, India continues to be in the category of those nations where hunger is "alarming". What is worse, despite high growth, the hunger index in India between 1996 and 2011 has gone up from 22.9 to 23.7. National Sample Survey Organisation data show that...

-DNA The Centre may have used the ordinance mode to push through with the Food Security Bill in the hope that this will bring political dividends but many of its stipulations will lead to serious challenges, even in a Cong-NCP ruled state like Maharashtra. On one hand, the total food grain availability in the state will go up from 3.95 lakh tonnes to 4.25 lakh tonnes, but only 75% from existing...