A recent report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, provides a damning indictment of the role of speculation in food commodities in fuelling the global food crisis. The report – 'Food Commodities Speculation and Food Price Crisis – was released on the eve of an emergency meeting of the UN-FAO on the instability in agricultural markets. The global food crisis in 2007-08 led to...

The department of food and public distribution has rejected both proposals of the National Advisory Council (NAC) to provide food security, saying the government risked running up against supply constraints and taking on an unsustainable fiscal burden. The rejection by the ministry of consumer affairs, food and public distribution means that both NAC, headed by Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, and the government will have to go back to the drawing board...

Given the scale of UPA-II's proposed food security programme, getting the recipe right was never going to be easy. But even accounting for their differences, the National Advisory Council (NAC) and the government are having more problems than expected pushing the right to food Legislation. Two NAC proposals have been rejected by the ministry for consumer affairs, food and public distribution, with the result that a fresh draft may need...

India will soon be the first country in the world “to enact a food security entitlement act under which every family below the poverty line will get 35 kg of grain”, says M.S. Swaminathan who is in Canada to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta. One of the pioneers of the Green Revolution in India, Swaminathan said India cannot depend on volatile global markets to ensure its food security and...

The new mining Legislation will make woman of the house chief beneficiary of the compensation for land acquired for mining project, as the government seeks to ensure the large amounts provided go into ensuring livelihood and are not depleted quickly. This is in sync with the government’s attempt to empower women by giving them a bigger role in financial decision-making. “Women are known to manage the household finances better than their male...