-Scroll.in Minister of Food and Public Distribution Saryu Roy cited a Union Government’s circular to withdraw the chief’s secretary’s order. Jharkhand’s Minister of Food and Public Distribution Saryu Roy on Saturday cancelled an instruction issued by the state’s chief secretary on the linking of the Aadhaar card to ration cards, The Indian Express reported on Sunday. Roy’s order follows the death of a child in Jharkhand’s Simdega district on September 28...

-Scroll.in The recent starvation death in Simdega epitomises a much larger problem of Aadhaar-related exclusion from the Public Distribution System in Jharkhand. The recent death of 11-year old Santoshi Kumari in Simdega district of Jharkhand has rightly stirred the country’s conscience. The context of this tragedy, however, is poorly understood, not least because of the Jharkhand government’s obfuscation. According to the family’s video testimonies, Santoshi died after starving for eight days. Even...

During the Bengal famine of 1943-44, over 2 million people died due to starvation, diseases and malnutrition, among other things. According to scholars, the apathy of the British government was largely responsible for such a massive tragedy. Despite the enacting of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in 2013, the situation of the downtrodden and the poor has not changed much in the country as compared to pre-Independence time. On 28...

-Livemint.com In India, 9 million people left farming between 2001 and 2011 largely due to distress, not because industry invited them, says Shyam Khadka, India’s representative at the FAO Shyam Khadka, India’s representative at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, says more Indians are moving out of agriculture due to distress and not because the manufacturing sector is inviting them. In an interview, Khadka calls for converting food...

-Scroll.in Aadhaar is depriving the most vulnerable people of their grain entitlements. Eleven-year-old Santoshi Kumari died asking for rice on September 28, eight months after her family stopped getting food rations from the government because their ration card was not linked to their Aadhaar, the biometrics-based 12-digit unique identification number that the Centre wants all Indian residents to have. The child’s death in Jharkhand’s Simdega district has elicited official responses that verge...