-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Congress today indicated that the food security scheme would be its main electoral plank, describing it as the biggest ever government intervention in the world to fight hunger and malnutrition. President Pranab Mukherjee today signed the food security ordinance that entitles two-thirds of India's population to 5kg food grains every month at highly subsidised rates. The Centre plans to convert it into an act soon. Congress communications chief...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The comptroller and auditor general has started conducting secret studies, called management reports, which are not tabled in Parliament. Starting with a report on Commonwealth Games (CWG), four such reports have been out. In the form of advisories, these reports are meant to forewarn the government on systematic faults and alert the departments to adopt fiscal prudence. Besides the one on CWG, the official auditor has produced...

-The Hindu   The parliamentary committees on the howitzer scam and the stock market scandal protected the powerful and failed to fix accountability. The same is true in the spectrum case The current political situation brings back memories of 1989. The Prime Minister then was under a cloud in the Bofors scam. Many of his close associates like Lalit Suri and Ajitabh Bachchan were accused of wrong-doing. Today, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and...

-Down to Earth The country's 76 million poor have been denied the right to claim subsidised foodgrain under public distribution system The government has denied 76 million people in the country eligible to access public distribution system (PDS) the benefits of the food security system. For the past 20 years, the government has not cared to refresh its data and has been distributing foodgrain according to the population figure of 1991. Worse, the...

-The Hindu By allowing futures trade in food and diversion of farm land for commercial purposes, the UPA government is fuelling the price rise International agencies are warning of high food prices on a global scale in 2013 if urgent action is not taken. But our government shows little concern. The President’s address to Parliament had only a cursory mention of inflation. “Inflation is easing gradually, but is still a problem,” he...