The Sharad Pawar-headed food ministry has set itself up for a confrontation with the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council on the National Food Security Bill. Pre-empting NAC’s draft on NFSA, the food ministry has decided to implement the Tendulkar committee report on poverty numbers which fall far below the figures that the NAC formula would have reached. In its last meeting, NAC had proposed and Congress president Sonia Gandhi had...

The NAC's recommendations on food security measures take heed of the fact that PDS reform is dependent on the availability of enough foodgrains. Three major elements of the United Progressive Alliance government's commitment to provide food security to the people are reforming the public distribution system (PDS), raising foodgrain productivity and production, and creating a decentralised, modern warehousing system. Ideally, the reforms in the PDS should have come first for the availability...

School vouchers should be an integral part of the Centre’s plans to implement the Right to Education (RTE). For the state to spend gargantuan amounts on school education is fine, but to insist that the delivery too would be by the state is meaningless. Surveys have shown that government teachers are absent from their schools and children cannot do simple arithmetic or write small paragraphs after years of schooling. Reforms...

Union Rural Development Ministry has invited suggestions from the State Governments on 50 per cent upfront payment of wages to workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) with a view to check complaints of delayed payment to workers. “Other suggestions being considered by the Union Rural Development Ministry to check delayed payments include formation of a committee including workers’ representatives to take work measurements,” said an...

Banks have designated red zones where the vast majority of Muslim clusters fall. This fact is confirmed by the rash of banking-related complaints received by the National Commission for Minorities. A little over a year ago, Ali Arshad, a resident of Okhla in Delhi, went to a well-known private sector bank to open a bank account. He thought his case would be fast-tracked because he had a banking background, he worked...