A pilot survey will be launched next month to assess the number of the poor in the country on a new set of parameters ahead of the scheduled BPL census in April 2011. The government has decided to launch the pilot project in 260 villages across the country to test the parameters suggested by a former Planning Commission member amid a debate on the best way of doing such counts. The project,...
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PDS kerosene seized from ashram
Seizure follows report of PDS kerosene being used for ritual by Swami Nithyananda A media report literally adding fuel to the fire resulted in Food and Civil Supplies Department officials searching the Nithyananda Dhyanapeetam ashram near Bidadi on Wednesday and seizing around 120 litres of blue kerosene meant for the Public distribution System. A team of six officials confiscated the fuel from the ashram of the controversial Swami Nithyananda after the report...
More »Put millets back on the plate by Biraj Patnaik
One of the key demands of the Right to Food Campaign for the National Food Security Act is to re-introduce nutritious millets to government food programmes like the Public distribution System. Millets like bajra, jowar, kodo, kutki and ragi among hundreds of other varieties have sustained communities for close to 10,000 years in India. Yet, they have been marginalized as food crops since the days of the Green Revolution in...
More »Shivraj Singh Chouhan, CM of Madhya Pradesh interviewed by Shriya Mohan
Why is Madhya Pradesh ranked so low in the Millennium Development Goals like child and maternal mortality, extreme poverty, hunger and safe drinking water? Social sector allocation has increased only during the last few years. Before 2005, there wasn’t enough money allocated to it when compared to poverty alleviation schemes. Also, it takes time for the benefits of the allocations to reach people and for real change to manifest itself....
More »Food security to top agenda at first NAC meeting by Smita Gupta
Food security is likely to top the resurrected National Advisory Council's (NAC) agenda when its members gather here on Thursday for their introductory meeting. They will also meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. However, sources in the NAC told The Hindu that before food security became a reality, they expect a long hard battle ahead, similar to the one NAC-I faced over the enactment of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act,...
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