Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee today said that the government will enact a legislation to provide subsidised wheat and rice to poor, but to make it a success there is a need to boost production and strengthen delivery system. "We are committed to ensure Food Security Act and to make successful, we need to produce more, procure more and strengthen delivery mechanism for making accessible and affordable," Mukherjee said while addressing...

The Centre wants all `kutcha' houses to be replaced by durable, disaster-resistant structures by 2016-17. It forms the big expression of intent in the first-of-its-kind `rural housing and habitat policy' that UPA may announce soon. The government wants to engage NGOs in rural housing, a sector the voluntary organisations have shunned till now. The government feels the rural populace will benefit from NGOs in the field of "technology dissemination" and...

Along with expanded availability and access, safety is one of the three prongs of food security. However, we in India have shockingly little control over the quality of the food we consume — apart from flat-out contami-nation at the level of agricultural produce to the hidden dangers of additives and preservatives and flavours, which can contain benzoates, glutamates, mono- and di-glycerides, nitrates, nitrites, and sulfites, all of which are linked...

The West Bengal government has allocated Rs 250 crore for introducing a scheme for generating employment for the urban youth, on the lines of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. State Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta said that funds allocated for this purpose this year may be augmented according to requirement. Similar schemes have been declared in Tripura and Kerala as well. The scheme, announced by Dr Dasgupta during his Budget...

The official line is simple. Since we cannot afford to feed all the hungry, there must only be as many hungry as we can afford to feed. There was irony in the timing of the petrol price decontrol order. The decision, which also covered major hikes in diesel and kerosene prices, and affects hundreds of millions of people, came even as Manmohan Singh advised world leaders in Toronto on the need...