-The Hindu The Union Cabinet on Tuesday cleared the National Food Security Bill that gives legal entitlement to 67 per cent population (including 75 per cent rural and 50 per cent urban) for subsidised grains under the Targeted Public Distribution System The Union Cabinet on Tuesday cleared the National Food Security Bill that gives legal entitlement to 67 per cent population (including 75 per cent rural and 50 per cent urban) for subsidised...

-The Hindustan Times Just 165 grams of cereals a person will get every day once the national food security law comes into effect, the Right To Food (RTF) campaign said on Tuesday. Reacting to the Cabinet’s approval of the bill, the campaign said the food entitlement would be woefully short of government’s own norm for nutritional requirement of a person. The campaign said that the provision of providing only 5 kg of...

-The Indian Express In all its versions, the food security bill places an unbearable fiscal burden, further distorts agriculture The design of policy in the revised version of the food security law proposed by the food ministry — cabinet approval for which was deferred on Monday — will make a bad idea worse. It is even less concerned about the imperatives of fiscal sustainability and the needs of the Indian population. Providing...

-The Hindu Despite severe opposition from civil society groups, the Union government has decided to cut the entitlement of a beneficiary to subsidised grain from 7 kg a month (as provided in the National Food Security Bill) to 5 kg under the Public Distribution System, as recommended by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Food. But it will continue providing the 2.3 crore beneficiaries of the Antyodaya Anna Yojna (the poorest of the...

-The Indian Express The annual subsidy bill for the UPA’s proposed food guarantee law has been estimated at Rs 1,24,747.1 crore, 38.6 per cent over the budgeted food subsidy of Rs 90,000 crore for next year. An alarmed finance ministry is learnt to have red-flagged some major changes proposed in the original National Food Security Bill, sources said. It has objected to the proposal to do away with the original categorisation of beneficiaries...