The word ‘hunger’ does not appear in the 12th Plan Approach Paper even once, whereas according to the latest Global Hunger Index Report, India continues to be in the category of those nations where hunger is ‘alarming’. What is worse, India is one of the three countries where the hunger index between 1996 and 2011 has gone up from 22.9 to 23.7, while 78 out of the 81 developing countries...
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Looking for the Poor
-EPW The media noise shed little light on the important issues involved in deciding the coverage of welfare programmes. The context for the Planning Commission’s (PC) affidavit on the official poverty line was the deliberation in the Supreme Court on how many people could be covered by the public distribution system (PDS). But while the sound and fury over the poverty line – Rs 32 per capita per day in the urban...
More »Major changes in Food Security Bill on the anvil, says Thomas by C Gouridasan Nair
The much-awaited National Food Security Bill will be introduced in the winter session of Parliament incorporating some major changes recommended by the National Advisory Council, chaired by Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Union Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food, and Public Distribution K.V. Thomas told The Hindu on Sunday that the council proposed coverage of the food security scheme from the present 45 per cent to an estimated 63 per cent...
More »‘Food security bill falls foul of SC ruling’ by Nitin Sethi
The Supreme Court commissioners in the food case have warned the Union government that their draft National Food Security Act falls foul of apex court orders on providing food and nutrition to the needy. In a letter to the government, the principal adviser to the office of commissioners, Biraj Patnaik, noted that the draft violated several existing orders of the Supreme Court. He said the apex court explicitly banned the role...
More »NREGA workers are mostly women by Gayathri Sasibhooshan
Kerala has the most number of female national rural employment guarantee act (NREGA) workers in the country, according to the rural development ministry's 2008 assessment. And the projection for the year 2010 showed 95% of NREGA workers in the state would be women. Why more women come for NREGA work is because men in Kerala are not ready to work for Rs 150 a day, the wage that is paid. But...
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