Cutting across party lines, several members of Parliament backed a universal public distribution system to ensure food security for all citizens “as a right” and vowed to oppose the ‘targeted' food security bill in Parliament. Among the participants at a Jan Manch organised by the Right to Food Campaign were G. Vivekananda, K. Keshava Rao and Mani Shankar Aiyer (Congress), Prakash Javadekar (BJP), Brinda Karat and P. Rajeev (CPI-M), D. Raja...
More »SEARCH RESULT
The sums don’t add up
-Live Mint It has cost me followers on Twitter, forced the government’s auditor to take the extreme step of sending an official (he misrepresented himself as an Election Commission official) to a Mint reporter’s residence, and attracted criticism about Mint being the government’s lapdog. So, why have we been writing about irregularities in the way the Comptroller and Auditor General of India conducted its audit of the so-called 2G scam? After all,...
More »Reviving Universal PDS: A Step Towards Food Security by Suranjita Ray
An unprecedented economic growth during the last decade has also seen increasing malnutrition, hunger and starvation amongst certain sections of society. India ranks 66 in the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO’s) World Hunger Index of 88 countries (Inter-national Food Policy Research Institute). More than 200 million people in this country are denied the right to food. One-third of all underweight children (57 million) in the world due to lack of...
More »Unjustified Aggressiveness! by D Bandyopadhyay
My attention was drawn to “An Open Letter to the Chief Minister of West Bengal” which was signed by thirty members of the civil society of Kolkata and Delhi. What disturbed me was the tone and tenor of the language used in the letter in denouncing Ms Mamata Banerjee’s bold initiative in inviting the Maoists of Junglemahal for a dialogue after “ceasefire”. May I ask with all humility who among the...
More »Auditor may have taken PAC’s cue by Appu Esthose Suresh
Exact math used by the government’s auditor in its calculation of losses and the process it followed still unclear The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) may have taken a cue from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) while calculating losses arising from the improper allocation of second-generation spectrum to telecom companies in 2008 (or the so-called 2G scam), according to documents reviewed by Mint. This is not to suggest that the...
More »