There is an interesting debate on food security and we should get the Planning Commission’s perspective on this. But as I write this, the Planning Commission Web site still does not have the mid-term appraisal, so Yojana Bhavan must still be polishing it. This column has, over time, taken the position that the food security programme is really important and a country growing as fast as India simply cannot ignore...

The NREGS is restricted. The PDS is targeted. Only exploitation is universal. The rotting of lakhs of tonnes of foodgrain in open yards, while shocking, is hardly new or surprising. Remember the rural poor marching on godowns in Andhra Pradesh in 2001 in similar circumstances? The Supreme Court was quite right in jolting the Union government. “In a country where admittedly people are starving, it is a crime to waste even...

Rs. 3,000 each awarded to 78 persons who had worked at three sites After a long struggle, 78 persons who had worked at three sites in Jharkhand under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, but had not been paid, have secured compensation for their ordeal. Deputy Labour Commissioner Mahendra Murmu awarded Rs. 3,000 per worker at a Labour Court here on Monday. This is seen as a breakthrough for the aggrieved workers,...

The Supreme Court’s observations on the public distribution system (PDS) which call for exclusion of people living above poverty line (APL); fixing monthly ration on per head rather than per household basis; and using unique identification (UID) cards for targeting PDS supplies have implications that go beyond the PDS. The court has virtually set new parameters even for the proposed food security law since that is also likely to be...

JHABUA, India — Inside the drab district hospital, where dogs patter down the corridors, sniffing for food, Ratan Bhuria’s children are curled together in the malnutrition ward, hovering at the edge of starvation. His daughter, Nani, is 4 and weighs 20 pounds. His son, Jogdiya, is 2 and weighs only eight. Landless and illiterate, drowned by debt, Mr. Bhuria and his ailing children have staggered into the hospital ward after falling...