Educating disadvantaged and vulnerable groups is key  In the face of imports posing a competition to domestic manufacturing, the government has decided to come up with a National Consumer Policy to ensure uniform national and international standards in the various arms of the Central and State governments, the regulatory bodies and on consumer fora, and to lay down the guiding principles of complaint resolution. The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)will...

More than the return of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to power, the aam admi will remember the year 2009 for the back-breaking mehngai and the inability of the government to make dal-roti, sabzi and chini affordable for the masses. The unprecedented rise in the price of essential commodities, particularly pulses, sugar, milk and vegetables turned the year bitter for the aam admi. What was irksome for the people was...

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Food and Civil Supplies Minister C. Divakaran has said that Rs.56 crore has been sanctioned to Kerala State Civil Supplies Corporation (Supplyco) as part of the market intervention programmes initiated by the State government to control the price line. In an official statement here, Mr. Divakaran said the amount had been sanctioned as a follow-up to the decision taken at the December 8 meeting of the Cabinet sub-committee. The amount...

The current food inflation is a result of food output growth not keeping pace with population growth Few recall that, just last month, there was a food security summit in Rome. In sharp contrast to the almost overwhelming coverage of the Copenhagen climate summit, it attracted far lesser attention from the heads of governments, as also from the media. This is somewhat strange as a food (and water) crisis can hit...

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) can be filed in any High Court or directly in the Supreme Court. It is not necessary that the petitioner has suffered some injury of his own or has had personal grievance to litigate. The PIL is a right given to the socially conscious member or a public spirited NGO to espouse a public cause by seeking judicial means for redressal of public injury. Such...