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...

Last week saw the publication by BS Books of the India Health Report 2010 (henceforth referred to as IHR10), edited (and mostly written) by Ajay Mahal, Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari. For anyone interested in India’s health status, access to health care and medicines, emerging health problems, the infrastructure of health services, medical ethics, health-care financing, government programmes and regulations and key issues in health sector reform, this 138-page report...

In pushing for a greatly truncated PDS, the Food Security Bill proposed by the NAC, which has many right-to-food activists, undermines the PDS itself. ENSURING food security was the big promise of United Progressive Alliance-2. The promise to enact legislation to ensure a minimum quantity of affordable food to all poor households in the country was part of the election manifesto of the Congress party that leads the government. The 100-day...

Once lauded as a model state for implementation of MGNREGA — the flagship programme of the UPA government — the state is on the backfoot nowadays as far as the scheme is concerned. Even as the Opposition BJP and the ruling Congress try to extract political mileage out of sarpanches agitation, at stake is the very scheme that has not only reduced the migration of labourers to other states but...

Rajniben, a village panchayat member from Ahmedabad district, does not have a chair to sit in the panchayat office. Unlike the other members, who all have a chair, there is a gunny sack reserved for Rajniben which she uses to sit on the floor when the panchayat meets. This is because Rajniben is a dalit and is not allowed to sit on par with panchayat members belonging to upper castes....