-Scroll.in The strongest safeguard against fraud is not end-to-end computerisation but clarity of entitlements: if people know what is due to them, they will fight for it. In a stunning admission of party hypocrisy, former Food Minister Shanta Kumar recently stated that the Bharatiya Janata Party's support for the National Food Security Act last year was just a pretence. Remember, when the act was being discussed in Parliament, BJP leaders (from Narendra...
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Food insecurity acts -Brinda Karat
-The Hindu The Shanta Kumar Committee's recommendations to unbundle the Food Corporation of India are in tune with U.S.-led demands raised in the World Trade Organization The Shanta Kumar Committee Report, released last week, on a range of issues relating to procurement, storage and distribution of food grains is not only deeply flawed in its reading of the situation on food security, but also short on facts. It was prepared under the...
More »Reforming FCI or cutting back food security? -Nitin Sethi
-Business Standard The Shanta Kumar Committee on restructuring FCI has suggested the reach of the National Food Security Act be curtailed to 40 per cent of the population The National Democratic Alliance government set up the high-level Shanta Kumar Committee to restructure and reform the state-owned Food Corporation of India. Instead, the panel ended up providing a road map to restructure the entire farming and food security policy of the government. In...
More »Revamping Food Corp: Panel wants Food Security Act changed but will BJP bite the bullet? -Seetha
-FirstPost.com In 2001, the Hyderabad-based Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) was asked by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government to study the costs of acquisition and distribution of food grains by the Food Corporation of India (FCI). After making a slew of suggestions, the report's author Gautam Pingle said the report was not making recommendations on "the more serious issue - of food grain policy" because it was beyond its scope....
More »‘Food Security Act will weaken PDS’
-The Financial Express Senior BJP leader and former food minister Shanta Kumar, who headed a high-level committee on restructuring Food Corporation of India, on Thursday termed the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013 as ‘vote security' legislation that would lead to massive diversion of grains from the public distribution system (PDS). "Prior to the passage of the food security act, we had expressed reservation on providing highly subsidised foodgrains to 67% of...
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