Supreme Court appointed commissioners have asked Jharkhand government to set up an enquiry commission to probe reports of hunger deaths in the state that has all along refuted such occurences. As many as 26 malnutrition deaths were reported from the state in 2008 and 2009. But the state government maintained the reasons behind the deaths weren’t related to hunger. Now, the office of the Commissioners of the Supreme Court (Right to Food),...

The draft food security legislation readied for cabinet’s approval is much narrower in scope than what was initially envisaged and, hence, stops short of assuring an entitlement as had been previously pledged. The final draft Bill which has been approved by the empowered group of ministers (eGoM) and reviewed by Mint restricts coverage only to poor citizens, confines it to the supply of 25kg of wheat and rice, does not lock...

I want you to consider some well-known, oft-repeated facts: * About half of India’s children are malnourished, a record poorer than the world’s poorest area, sub-Saharan Africa. * India is home to a quarter of the world’s hungry — about 230 million people — according to the World Food Programme. * India is the world’s second-largest grower of rice and wheat, and more than 50 million tonnes of foodgrains lie in...

Members of the Right to Food Campaign on Monday “rejected'' the proposed draft of the National Food Security Bill that promises 25 kg. of food grains to each Below Poverty line population family a month at Rs. 3 a kg and urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to come up with a bill that covers every adult resident of the country under the Public Distribution System (PDS). “Nothing short of a universal...

For the preparation of the Commonwealth Games 2010, around Rs 17,400 crore have been spent on Delhi by the government over the past three years. The over-used word deployed by public leaders and officials to describe the city, which they hope will emerge from these exertions, is ‘world-class’. But forgotten are the men and women whose toil will make this ‘world-class’ city possible. At its peak in 2008-09, an estimated...