The National Advisory Council will meet on Friday again to discuss the National Food Security Bill but the basic tablet of principles could be substantially changed with the Sonia Gandhi-led group taking a U-turn away from its earlier demand for universalisation of the public distribution system. The proposal supported by the Planning Commission, suggesting that the Tendulkar committee figures for those living below the poverty line be the cut off...

A pilot project on refining methods of counting the poor is attractive at a time when entitlement to welfare schemes is hotly debated Targeted approaches to delivering food and other goods often attract criticism from different quarters. Exclusion of deserving individuals and inclusion of those who are better off have marred programmes such as the Public Distribution System (PDS), so much so that universalization has been recommended as a panacea to...

With more than 400 million Indians going to bed hungry each day, food security has become a crucial issue. On June 4 last year, the president made an announcement: “My government proposes to enact a new law — the National Food Security Act — that will provide statutory basis for a framework which assures food security for all. Every family below the poverty line in rural as well as urban...

To avoid a big burden on the exchequer from the proposed food security law, the Planning Commission will propose some key changes to the plan, including a virtual abandonment of the concept of universal public distribution system (PDS) endorsed by the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC). Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia in a presentation to Gandhi later this week would suggest that under the proposed scheme, grain be...

A crucial meeting of the National Advisory Council (NAC), which may finalise the draft food bill, will be held Sep 24, informed sources said here Monday. The previous meeting, chaired by NAC chairman Sonia Gandhi, Aug 30 could not finalise the draft bill, which should be sent for the government's consideration, as there was no consensus among the NAC members on whether to confine food security only to people below poverty...