-The Telegraph Mumbai: The immediate fiscal impact of the food security programme is going to be manageable. Since implementation of the scheme across India will take time, the cost burden for the programme in fiscal year 2013-14, in addition to the budgeted food subsidy of Rs 90,000 crore, has been estimated by Edelweiss Research at Rs 10,000 crore. This is roughly 0.1 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP). But once the...

-The Hindustan Times A couple of months ago, I was in South Block for a meeting at the ministry of defence. security norms dictate leaving mobile and electronic devices at the checkpoint. Imagine my horror when I came back an hour later to see one of the guards going through my iPad. This cavalier attitude towards individual privacy is illustrative of an interesting dilemma between the inevitability of a more intrusive...

-The Hindu The government has come good on its promise to put in place a food security architecture but the manner in which it has pushed through the historic measure, which gives roughly 67 per cent of the population a legal right over cheap food grains, suggests it was done with an eye on the 2014 general election. The ordinance route is an extraordinary move, considered legitimate only in situations of...

-The Economic Times MUMBAI: The Union Cabinet this week passed an ordinance to implement the National Food security Bill (NFSB). The bill guarantees legal entitlement of food grains at a subsidised price to ~67 per cent of India's population. The ordinance will come into effect immediately once it is signed by the President. But it also needs to be approved by both the houses of Parliament in the monsoon session within six...

-The Business Standard Chhattisgarh Food security Bill was passed on Dec 21, 2012. Under the Act, about 90% of the state's population will have PDS entitlements Raipur: In December 2007, when Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh announced no one would die of starvation, not many realised the state was going to create history. The announcement came from the sleepy village of Sonakhan in Mahasamund district, where in 1856, the landlord of the area,...