-Economic and Political Weekly A number of independent estimates have been made of the cost of implementation of the National Food Security Bill, now an Act. However, these estimates are either based on wrong assumptions or work with numbers that are not in the public domain. The one thing that most of them share is an attempt to demonstrate that the costs will be unaffordable. Please click here to Access the entire...

-NDTV The debate on the merits and demerits of the National Food Security Bill went on for months. But most of it seems disconnected to the reality on the ground to the churning lakhs of low income families are experiencing as they register for the new scheme. There is anxiety and desperation to get subsidised foodgrain. In the office of the Food and Supply Officer in Delhi's north east district, many have...

-PTI NEW DELHI: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) launched its multi-lingual website to reach out to various sections of the society. "The website, www.uidai.gov.in, will now appear in five regional languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi and Tamil in addition to Hindi and English," an official release said. UIDAI is planning to systematically add additional language microsites to facilitate ease of Access to all sections of the society. The second phase of the...

-Kafila.org This fact-finding exercise was coordinated by the CENTRE FOR POLICY ANALYSIS. Team members were the human rights activist and former civil servant Harsh Mander; former Director-General of the Border Security Force, E N Rammohan; Professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University; National Integration Council member John Dayal; senior journalist Sukumar Muralidharan and CPA Director and senior editor Seema Mustafa. Introduction and Overview The first impression of the Muzaffarnagar countryside, now green...

Research by the Asian Centre for Human Rights, released on 18 September 2013, provides renewed evidence of marginalisation of Scheduled Tribes (STs) or adivasis in government employment, and in fact suggests that such exclusion is growing in some areas despite policies of reservation. (The entire report can be Accessed here). Until May 2013, the number of backlog adivasi vacancies with the Central Government was 12,195 posts. Breaking up these figures...