-Economic and Political Weekly The proposed legislation on the National Food Security Act has been steadily watered down since it was fi rst mooted in 2009. The Parliamentary Standing Committee that examined the 2011 Bill has disappointingly continued with "targeting". If the government passes the bill incorporating the committee's suggestions, a historic opportunity to combat hunger and malnutrition would be lost. Ankita Aggarwal (aggarwal.ankita87@gmail.com) is a Research Scholar at the Centre for...

-The Telegraph The world lauds us as the largest democracy. Yet, how much of a democracy are we and where must we improve? Elections and their consequences: We have regular elections. They are supervised with increasing effectiveness as far as booth capturing, bogus voters and violence are concerned. The influence of money has not waned; if anything, it has increased. It is not as it used to be, for paying voters only....

-The Times of India The Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) through an appeal on Monday urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to abolish death penalty and spare Veerappan's associates - Gnanaprakash, Simon, Meesekar Madaiah and Bilavendran from the impending execution. These associates of Veerappan were sentenced to death in 2004 in connection with a landmine blast at Palar in Karnataka in 1993 in which 22 police personnel were killed and their mercy...

-Governance Now Questions current growth vision when 40 percent children are malnourished Batting for universal coverage of food entitlement, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen called for strengthening the draft food security bill, particularly the provisions relating to children’s entitlement. He said the supreme court orders on mid-day meals and integrated child development services (ICDS) had made important contribution to the health and nutrition of children. The bill, he felt, should not dilute these...

-The Times of India HYDERABAD: The UPA government's petprogramme - the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) - may have been started with the objective of securing the livelihood of the residents of rural India by providing assured employment for 100 days in a year, but has ended up choking the entrepreneurial spirit in the hinterlands ofAndhra Pradesh. These are the findings of a study conducted by a faculty of...