KEY TRENDS   • Section 105 of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, which provides for excluding 13 Central legislation, including Land Acquisition (Mines) Act 1885, Atomic Energy Act, 1962, Railway Act 1989, National Highways Act 1956 and Metro Railways (Construction of Works) Act, 1978, from its purview, has been amended for payment of compensation with rigours $ • The amendments have now...

A higher order of political leadership, a transparent and accountable bureaucracy and activist citizen forums are imperative for effectively addressing hunger and poverty in India, N.R. Narayana Murthy, chairman and chief mentor of Infosys Technologies, said on Sunday. Addressing a policy forum at the international conference on “Eliminating hunger and poverty” hosted by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), Mr. Murthy said the dark side of India's growth story had been...

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...

The world’s rich countries boosted government support for agriculture in 2009, according to a report that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released last week. The report, “Agricultural Policies in OECD Countries: At a Glance 2010,” is part of the OECD’s annual effort to quantify and assess the support that its 31 developed country members provide to their agricultural producers. The OECD found that the Producer Support Estimate (PSE)...

The US Senate is expected to pass the Global Food Security Act, new legislation that would significantly expand the government's commitment to combating hunger worldwide with a broad range of measures and more money, and a special coordinator, or "food czar", to oversee implementation of these provisions across agencies. A proposed new fund would allocate several billion dollars over five years to research and development, to enhance "food security, agriculture productivity,...