-Outlook New Delhi: The postal department will be looking at opening 1 crore small savings accounts for the girl child by March 31 as part of the 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' campaign, Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said today. "The postal department has decided to open 1 crore 'Sukanya Samridhi Account' by March 31," Prasad said here. 'Sukanya Samridhi Account' can be opened at any time from the birth of a...

-Economic and Political Weekly   A "high-level" committee makes half-baked recommendations which will rollback the PDS. A ccording to media reports, former Union Minister for Food Shanta Kumar recently disowned the National Food Security Act (NFSA) on behalf of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He explained, without blinking, that the BJP had just pretended to support the Act when it was being discussed in Parliament, for fear of the possible electoral consequences of...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Survivors and family members of the 93 people killed in the fire at Calcutta's AMRI hospital in 2011 have moved the Supreme Court seeking compensation between Rs 7 crore and Rs 9 crore each. A bench of Justices S.J. Mukhopadhaya and A.M. Sapre yesterday issued notices to AMRI on the application moved by the victims, led by Paromita Guha Thakurta and others, challenging a National Consumer Disputes Redressal...

-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...

-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...