-The Tribune The UPA's flagship programme MGNREGS changed the employment scene for the rural poor. While 100-day job guarantee was a novel step, loopholes and poor implementation rendered it a liability. The Modi govt hopes to gradually reinvent the scheme, if not entirely scrap it. Midway through the Congress-led UPA's second tenure - believed to be largely the courtesy of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) -...

-The Times of India Blog The presidential address to Parliament on June 9, 2014 had focussed nearly exclusively on projects and schemes, eschewing policy. Therefore, many had eagerly awaited the budget speech for a policy Vision of the new government. Unfortunately, it too left observers guessing on whether the government would tackle tough reforms or rely principally on better implementation. Had this been the budget of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), arguably...

-The Hindu We need a National Authority on Hunger Elimination, with adequate funds and exclusive powers, administrative and financial Of the eight Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations, the first relates to eradicating poverty and extreme hunger, halving hunger by 2015. But most of the countries, including India, have not achieved tangible results on this front. With 2015 around the corner, the new government has a major task of addressing...

-The Economic Times The rationale for embedding nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive programmes in a development agenda is compelling. And yet, strangely, it has been ignored. Planning and implementation of such programmes require collaborative, consistent and aligned effort across multiple sectors. Currently, we have a myopic Vision to pursue narrow agendas. Transformational change requires tackling one of the most obdurate challenges: malnutrition. This blight has a large human impact and a larger economic impact...

-The New Indian Express HYDERABAD: Food Sovereignty Alliance (FSA) has been in existence across 13 districts in both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana since 2013. It brings onto a common platform - Adivasi, Dalit, Pastoralist and Peasant social movements along with co-producers, to build solidarity with one another for a common Vision of food sovereignty and they screened Breeding Invasions at Lamakaan on Sunday evening followed by an open forum. This film produced...