-The Hindu State government scheme of free cows and goat/sheep is yielding results KOVILPATTI (Tamil Nadu): For the villagers of Kumarettiapuram, near Ettayapuram in Tuticorin district, milk, a primary nutritional source, was unavailable till December 2011. The State government's scheme of free distribution of milch cows and goat/sheep for the Poor has helped the villagers get this primary nutrition. M. Vijayalakshmi, one of the beneficiaries, who received a cow and a calf from...

-The Business Standard   The food security ordinance would empower Poor urban migrants to challenge denial of ration cards The new Food Security Ordinance provides virtually nothing and yet quite a lot. What it provides is food as a legal right. And that means a lot for a Poor migrant in a city chawl, with no local address proof, having left all identity cards back in their native village and unable to claim anything...

-The Hindustan Times The UPA's new game-changer, the food security bill, provides for lesser penalty for errant officials than the watershed Right To Information Act and a tedious process for booking them. The RTI Act had provided for a maximum penalty of Rs. 25,000 against any official denying information to an applicant. The government has adopted a minimal approach by prescribing just Rs. 5,000 penalty for officials, who fail to provide subsidised...

-The Business Standard Many myths surround the new 'food security' law Back in the 1980s, the government distributed an average of nearly 16 million tonnes of foodgrain each year through the public distribution system (PDS). The 1990s saw an increase in the PDS throughput to just over 17 million tonnes. The striking change came in the decade of the "noughties", which saw the annual figure climbing to around 20 million tonnes, then...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Even as the Election Commission plans consultations with political parties in the first week of August on a recent Supreme Court order seeking framing of guidelines for parties' poll manifestoes, senior commission officials are in a dilemma on how to define a "freebie" in the first place. The poll watchdog plans to sound out all recognized national and state parties in the first week of August...