If we get it right, the Food Security Bill carries the potential to alter the destinies of millions of India's poor and disadvantAged People, by assuring them as a legal right sufficient food to live with dignity. It was approved by the Cabinet after over two years of intense, sometimes fractious debate. Opinion in the Cabinet itself was reportedly divided around the proposed law. Gaping divisions persist, even as the...

The Mamata Banerjee government is planning to take politics — or at least political symbols — out of panchayats, the foundation on which the Left built the edifice that remained impregnable for 34 years. “We would like to have non-political rural bodies as it would uproot petty politics that often halts development projects in rural areas. If things go as planned, the required amendments in the act would come into force...

Thirty-four-year-old Praseetha Dineshan from Kattipara panchayat in Kozhikode used to work as a postwoman delivering letters from 8 am to 5.30 pm. No longer.  After completing a training course of Coconut Development Board (CDB) for climbing coconut tree using a machine, she has now quit her temporary job and is happy to climb coconut trees to pluck coconuts. "Yesterday I climbed 15 trees and today I did 20. More and more people...

-The Telegraph   The Sonia-Gandhi headed National Advisory Council will prod the government to bring a law to protect unorganised retail sector workers as it brings foreign direct investment into multi-brand retail. Sonia, the council chairperson and the Congress chief, showed the green flag to the government on FDI in retail. The NAC in 2005 had drafted the unorganised sector workers’ social security bill that proposed a national authority to oversee the implementation of...

There is no typo in the title of this article, but the term “scorepati” is perhaps confusing. By way of explanation, let me introduce three acquaintances. Meena, age 50, lives in a two-room kaccha hut with her disabled husband Chhote Lal who studied up to Class 2. They own half an acre of unirrigated land and a goat. Meena is unable to take up any remunerated work as Chhote Lal needs...