The National Advisory Council (NAC) has now sketched out the “contours of a national food security bill”. The goal is worthy: “Protecting all children, women and men from hunger and food deprivation.” To some, the bill might appear utopian. The truth is worse. The bill reminds us of John Stuart Mill’s denunciation of a government policy of his day: “What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be...

PAC member N.K. Singh recuses himself from meetings to avoid conflict of interest Two editors, Vinod Mehta of Outlook and Manu Joseph of Open magazine, told the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament on Monday it was their journalistic duty to place in the public domain the transcripts of tapped conversations between corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and others which had a direct bearing on the 2G spectrum allocation scandal. After the meeting, PAC...

Promises action “to allay fears and insecurity Christians are experiencing” Chief Ministers will be asked to deal firmly with anti-Christian violence Promises to act on the Saldanha report on violence against minorities in Karnataka Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured a Christian delegation on Saturday that he was trying to evolve a consensus on granting Scheduled Caste status to Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims. He also said he would ask Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram...

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed deep sorrow today and offered the full support of the United Nations after a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck Japan, killing dozens of people and destroying towns, villages and large swathes of infrastructure. UN agencies say they are on standby to assist in Japan and any other countries that may also be hit by tsunamis in the wake of the quake, which was one of the...

A government proposal seeking to police blogs has come in for severe criticism from legal experts and outraged the online community. The draft rules, drawn up by the government under the Information Technology Amendment Act, 2008, deal with due diligence to be observed by an intermediary. Under the Act, an 'intermediary' is defined as any entity which on behalf of another receives, stores or transmits any electronic record. Hence, telecom networks,...