-The Indian Express The Congress’s long-deferred promise, the food security bill, has been cleared by the cabinet and will now be debated and refined in Parliament. For all its formidable complexity, the draft bill is evasive on some of the fundamentals, like exactly who will be served by the subsidy. Though it has moved away from a narrowly targeted, tightly rationed approach and now intends to make cheap foodgrain readily available to...

-The Telegraph   The Centre has reached an agreement with the BJP to pass a bill on pension reforms in the next “two or three” days, according to a cabinet minister. It has also been working on UPA partner Trinamul Congress, which is opposed to the bill. The BJP agreed after the government gave in on two of its demands related to the legislation, the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Bill, 2011. One was...

-The Business Standard   The new Bill will set back the cause of food security - while wrecking central finances. The Food Security Bill cleared by the Union Cabinet for introduction in Parliament seems irrational and impractical by parts. It seeks to provide a statutory right to highly-subsidised food for 75 per cent of the rural population, with 46 per cent in the “priority” category, or below the poverty line (BPL); and to...

-The Hindu   Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister and Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar revealed on Sunday that the State was in talks about utilising the labour under the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) for agriculture, to bridge the shortage of supply of farm labour. “The State government is discussing whether it will be possible to divert the labour available under the MGNREGS to agriculture in the State, which is losing...

-Express News Service In a major step towards fulfilling the ruling Congress’s poll promise, the Union Cabinet today cleared the National Food Security Bill that seeks to provide legal entitlement of foodgrain to 75 per cent of the rural population and up to 50 per cent of the urban population. The Bill seeks to divide the eligible households into two broad categories — priority and general — wherein the “priority” group will...