-The Telegraph Agartala: Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar has criticised the Centre for promulgating the food security ordinance by evading parliamentary scrutiny and termed it a "nutrition destruction ordinance". Asserting that the provisions in the ordinance would only accentuate the rural-urban divide and destroy whatever food security people of this country now have, Sarkar said, "We had received a copy of the ordinance and conveyed our opinion to the Centre, demanding intensive...

-First Post Sonia Gandhi wants the chief ministers of fourteen states in which the Congress party is in power to role out the food security scheme in letter and spirit, and in quick time. Some media reports suggest that the scheme will be rolled out on August 20, which also happens to be the birth anniversary of Sonia's late husband Rajiv Gandhi. While there seems to be a great hurry to launch...

-The Guardian A landmark bill to make the right to food a legal entitlement is mired in controversy over its failure to address a flawed public food distribution system, misplaced priorities and exclusions India has an over abundance of food grains stocked in warehouses, yet millions of India's poor are left without food. Development practitioners and NGOs are in favour of disbanding the current food security system, the public distribution system (PDS),...

-The New Indian Express Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa has emerged among the strongest voices against the Food Security Bill, which is being pushed by the UPA government. She recently wrote to the Prime Minister asking him to exempt Tamil Nadu from the implementation of the ordinance that brought the Food Security Bill into force. Apart from the political overtones that such a request might be seen to have,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Over half of India's urban residents can be called poor. The housing ministry has moved a cabinet note that has classified nearly 52 per cent of town and city dwellers as poor after a socio-economic caste census that is "99 per cent" complete. The ministry has also dropped a criterion from the list of parameters an expert committee had suggested to automatically count in and count out households from...