Despite recording robust economic growth over the last couple of decades and spending thousands of crores of rupees on subsidising foodgrain and other programmes aimed at improving the nation’s social indicators, India ranks a low 67 among 84 countries on the Global Hunger Index, 2010. The country has actually dropped two levels since last year on the index published jointly by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Welthungerhilfe and Concern...

“This Employment Guarantee Act is the most significant legislation of our times in many ways. For the first time, rural communities have been given not just a development programme but a regime of rights…The NREGA gives employment, gives income, gives a livelihood, and it gives a chance to live a life of self-respect and dignity.” — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the launch of NREGS The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme...

When noted economist Jean Dreze visited Surguja in Chhattisgarh a decade ago, its utterly non-functional Public Distribution System (PDS) looked like especially “designed to fail.” The National Advisory Committee member has written in a recent article that the ration shop owners illegally sold the grain meant for the poor and “hunger haunted the land.” But that was then. The economist was pleasantly shocked to see the transformation this time. “Ten years...

Tribal-dominated Raygada district in Orissa on Wednesday became the first district in the country to have biometric rations cards and bar-coded ration cards for its million plus population. Designed jointly by the state government and the World Food Programme (WFP), the hi-tech biometric registration system aims to ensure that subsidised food goes only to those entitled to it. The district has been chosen as a pilot district by the World Food...

Orissa government to save Rs 40 crore by cancelling them THE Orissa government has cancelled over 88,000 bogus ration cards detected during a two-and-a-half-month drive by the state’s food supplies department. Sources said more than 68,000 of the ghost cards detected in 27 of Orissa’s 30 districts between November 2009 and January this year belonged to the Below Poverty Line (BPL) category; 9,877 such cards were under the Antyodyaya scheme aimed to...