Civil society groups on Tuesday came out strongly against the Centre’s draft National Food Security Bill, which has not incorporated the National Advisory Council’s suggestion for providing maternity entitlements to about 15 crore women in the informal (non-Government) sector, as in the Central Government, thereby denying food security (breast feeding) to infants.  Similarly, the current legal guarantee of 'hot cooked meals' for children attending anganwadis has been diluted by providing the...

Team Anna on Thursday echoed concerns raised by aruna roy-led National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI) on the government's grievance redressal bill. Criticizing the structure for redressal created in the government bill as highly centralized that would collapse under the weight of complaints, Team Anna member Arvind Kejriwal said the selection process was "faulty". Activists have suggested that complaints be dealt with at the district level itself. Under the current...

-The Hindu   aruna roy writes to PM The National Campaign for Peoples' Right to Information (NCPRI) has sought a new provision in the government's draft Citizen's Right to Grievances Redress Bill, 2011, to compensate a complainant for entitlements wrongly denied or delayed. The government's draft empowers the independent appellate authority to penalise for denial or delay in entitlements but does not provide for compensating a complainant. Rather than have the Grievance Redress as part...

Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday gave a thumbs-up to the independent social audit mechanism adopted by the Narendra Modi-led Gujarat government for the NREGS. He brushed aside reservations expressed by a member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council (CEGC), the apex monitoring agency for the rural job guarantee scheme, while endorsing Gujarat’s model. “Let there be multiplicity of mechanisms. They need to be independent and transparent. It can be...

What kept Prime Minister Manmohan Singh busy after securing minister A Raja’s resignation on the night of November 14 last year?   He was writing a reply to National Advisory Council chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s letter on the practice of manual scavenging. On November 15, he wrote to her that he was asking the Minister of Social Justice & Empowerment to “examine how to strengthen” implementation of the Employment of Manual Scavengers and...