The department of food and public distribution has rejected both proposals of the National Advisory Council (NAC) to provide food security, saying the government risked running up against supply constraints and taking on an unsustainable fiscal burden. The rejection by the ministry of consumer affairs, food and public distribution means that both NAC, headed by Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, and the government will have to go back to the drawing board...

Given the scale of UPA-II's proposed food security programme, getting the recipe right was never going to be easy. But even accounting for their differences, the National Advisory Council (NAC) and the government are having more problems than expected pushing the right to food legislation. Two NAC proposals have been rejected by the ministry for consumer affairs, food and public distribution, with the result that a fresh draft may need...

Eliminating hunger from the State seems a distant possibility if the results of the latest survey report ‘Millennium Development Goals - A status report on Orissa’ are any indication. The survey found a high of 43 per cent families in the State don’t have ration card at all. Significantly, it reveals that more than half of the beneficiaries (52 per cent), who avail the Antyodaya Anna Yojana, fail to receive the...

Moving ahead of Ayodhya, the BJP has advised the government to view food as a fundamental right and to come with a legislation in this regard at the earliest. The party described the Food Security Bill as a non-starter and has asked the government to take measures for revamping the public distribution system (PDS). The party also said the government should take measures for revamping of the public distribution system. "Food...

As the Prime Minister hands out the first official AADHAAR numbers in the tribal district of Nandurbar on Wednesday, civil society activists in the capital are questioning the very basis of the ambitious Unique Identification (UID) scheme. “Even basic procedures have not been followed before launching such a massive project,” said Usha Ramanathan, an expert in law, poverty and civil rights. “The people of India, as well as Parliamentarians need to...