-Outlook UPA’s populist trumpcard of 2008—the farm loan waiver—has fallen short of its intended target, as a CAG audit throws up The Scheme     2008 Union finance minister P. Chidambaram announces farmer debt waiver and relief scheme in budget; PM Manmohan Singh writes to beneficiaries “seeking their support”     Rs 52,275 cr Total money that was disbursed to eligible farmers across the nation as part of loan waiver scheme     Rs 50,000 The loan...

-Live Mint Parliamentary committee’s proposals on the food security Bill are an improvement over the original The standing committee of Parliament, set up to examine the National Food Security Bill (NFSB), has finally given its recommendations. With this, the Bill has moved one step closer to seeing daylight. The recommendations, which are not binding on the government, will now be considered by the Union cabinet before being put to vote in Parliament.   The...

-The Times of India Aam Aadmi Party has Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit in its crosshairs again, promising to expose on Friday how the Delhi government consistently "favoured" private power distribution companies at the expense of the public. Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan announced on Thursday that they would expose "connivance" between Dikshit and the electricity companies. The offensive against Delhi government is not new and, in fact, marks the end of a...

-The Hindu By opting for a U.S.-style medical care model, India is endangering its universal health coverage goal, and paving the way for a corporatised, for-profit system As India continues to debate how best to implement universal health coverage, two recent and seemingly unrelated news items need to be analysed carefully. The first one pertains to a report released earlier this year by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine in...

-The Hindu Business Line Dependence on the public distribution system (PDS) for buying essential commodities has gone up in recent times, according to the results of the latest household consumption survey. The National Sample Survey (NSS) 66th round, done in 2009-10, shows that consumption of rice, wheat, sugar and kerosene, sold through the PDS, rose both in urban and rural households, against the previous survey in 2004-05. The fact that the Government...