POVERTY/FOOD SECURITY - 2011

POVERTY/FOOD SECURITY - 2011 (January to December 2011)

Compiled By Human Rights Documentation∗

Indian Social Institute, Lodi Road, New Delhi – 110 003, (India)

Ignoring hunger is nothing short of genocide: Binay ak While human rights activists across the world express their shock and outrage at Binayak Sen's life imprisonment sentence, one of the biggest blows will be felt by his alma mater, Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore. Until the verdict, the gentle doctor was busy, among other things, with a new project which could usher in a new light for healthcare education in India. Following the Social Determinants of Health report of 2008 by the World Health Organisation (WHO), Sen was appointed by CMC Vellore as a consultant to draft a curriculum model that would incorporate human rights within the ambit of healthcare and thus pave the way for a more socially equitable society. Ignoring his exemplary work among the tribals of Chhattisgarh, the Indian State imprisoned Sen in 2007 on charges of having links with the Maoists. In 2008, while still in jail, he was announced winner of the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights. After several campaigns as well as appeals by 22 Nobel laureates, he was released on bail by the Supreme Court in May 2009. But the relief was short-lived: on December 24, Raipur district and sessions court judge B P Varma sentenced him to life imprisonment for the same 'crime'. In such a scenario, CMC's desire to implement the curriculum — which would have been the first to reinstate the Utopian notion that doctors are next to God — stands crippled. How did the seed for such a curriculum come to be planted? "The WHO report has made a remarkable statement that social inequity is killing people on a grand scale. CMC has been in the process of incorporating the idea of social inequity into the curriculum. Except for some specific work done by organisations like CEHAT, JNU Centre for Social Medicine, Sama and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, there is no precedent in India in unifying health and social inequity," Dr Sen told this reporter a few days before the verdict. His placid tone as always belied the burning passion that has seen him devote 30 years of his life to caring for the underprivileged. "There is widespread hunger in the country today and the increasing levels of displacement and dispossession are further robbing the poor of their meagre means of livelihood," continued Sen. "The situation is nothing short of a genocide, particularly since we have allowed this to happen for such a long period of time. The country is hungry for a Right to Health." The new project in Vellore did keep the activist doctor busy and away from his family for days on end. While still at the draft stage, the curriculum has already managed to get students to survey malnutrition in the hinterland. But it is Sen's clinic in Dhamtari village in the now-famous district of Dantewada in Chhattisgarh that has faced a lull in functioning. The brewing violence between the armed forces and the Maoists — in which the tribals have been trapped and victimised — has stalled every kind of work undertaken by activists. Sen had been trying to get back the clinic — which includes a pathology laboratory, a pharmacy and a training centre for health workers — to its previous form. "I haven't been able to attend to the clinic on a weekly basis because of my extensive travel as well as the fact that the area has been declared as extremely sensitive," he said. "It is tough indeed because no doctor is willing to go there. It will take time to reinstate the confidence of volunteers." But patience is a virtue that one could best learn from the man who was arrested on charges of being a Maoist after he blew the whistle on the state's atrocities against tribals by the vigilante militia Salwa Judum. While the sessions court verdict may have angered scores of human rights activists in the country, Sen has always believed that the truth will eventually triumph. As a doctor — a healer and nurturer — his only concern most recently has been the issue of hunger. "It is tragic that when 40 per cent of our countrymen go hungry, the government is gearing itself for military confrontation," he said. "The government asserts that it has been unable to undertake any developmental projects in central India because of the presence of the Maoists. But what about those areas where there are no Maoists? We are in the middle of a crisis, and this cannot be solved with military intervention. If such measures are not stalled now, we are moving towards human annihilation. I feel inadequate that I haven't been able to do much." Those who've been instrumental in foiling the doctor's exemplary work would perhaps be happy to hear his momentary words of failure. Before his imprisonment, Binayak Sen was

∗ This is a collection of previously published news and views from the print as well as the electronic media, whose reference marked at the end of each news items. Department of Documentation and Library (DDL) of the Indian Social Institute, New Delhi neither claims to the veracity of the facts in the news nor subscribes to the views expressed.

working on a unique medical curriculum model for his alma mater to incorporate human rights in the realm of healthcare "The WHO report has stated that social inequity is killing people on a large scale. Christian Medical College Vellore has been in the process of incorporating the idea of social inequity into the curriculum. This is the first time this is happening in India" (TOI, 03/01/2011)

Denial of cheap ration to woman with seven children upsets HC Upset by denial of subsidised rations to the poor due to unscheduled closures of fair price shops, the Delhi High Court has ordered the city government to strictly monitor their workings and take penal actions against them. Peeved to find out some of the poor, including a woman with seven kids, are being denied ration simply because their ration cards are pending renewal with the government authorities, Justice S Muralidhar also ordered expeditious renewal of their ration cards. "The court is of the view that the monitoring of the functioning of the fair price shops has to be tightened and the poor ought not to be denied their entitlement of rations on account of non-functioning of the FPS," he said after being apprised of the unscheduled closure of a fair price shop in Bhim Nagar area near Nangloi in West Delhi. The remarks made the Delhi Government's Food and Supply Department's assistant commissioner, present in the court, give an undertaking to it for constituting a task force within three days to check the functioning of fair price shops. Approving of the undertaking, Justice Murlidhar asked the government to apprise it of the task force findings before the next date of hearing and said, "Where ever any corrective action is needed to be taken, it will be taken without awaiting further court orders." The court asked the city government to have its fair price shops in West Delhi area surveyed by the task force "to ensure that they function in a proper manner and the ration card holders are not deprived of the rations and other benefits to which they are entitled." The court was hearing a joint plea by various West Delhi residents, complaining of their miseries on account of denial of rations on various grounds, including unscheduled closure of government's fair price shops. The court was equally upset to note that some of the poor citizens are not being given rations as their plea for renewing their rations card is pending with the authorities. "Petitioner No 1, Premlata's ration card is pending renewal for want of a biometric review. Meanwhile, she is not being given the ration despite having seven children to feed," the court noted. "This court is unable to understand why ration card holders whose card is pending renewal is not being issued ration in the interregnum," wondered the court adding, "This is perhaps the plight of others also." (Deccan herald, 07/01/2010)

Government's commitment to food security questioned The Right of Food Campaign has charged the Central government with lack of commitment in providing food and nutrition security to citizens with its reported decision to revise the issue prices of wheat and rice for the Above Poverty Line (APL) category of beneficiaries in the Public Distribution System (PDS). “This is the first step to finish off the subsidised food grains scheme,” the Campaign said on Sunday. “The move, coupled with the rejection of subsidised food grains entitlement for the APL category, by the experts group headed by Chairman of Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council C. Rangarajan shows that elimination of hunger and malnutrition, which is a constitutional requirement and international commitment under the Millennium Development Goals, is a non-issue for the government,” it said. “What has dismayed us is that when food inflation is reaching 18.6 per cent and the prices of essential commodities are shooting up, the Centre, failing to control and stabilise prices, is now moving towards raising the prices of wheat and rice for the APL cardholders. We want the decision — though held in abeyance — to be reversed immediately.” Demanding a comprehensive National Food Security Act with a universal PDS, the Campaign said the artificial divide between the APL and the Below Poverty Line (BPL) be removed, as more than 50 per cent of the deserving people were excluded due to inaccurate targeting. “Instead of widening the coverage of subsidised food at affordable prices, this move of increasing the prices or recommending that only a small percentage of the population be made beneficiaries of subsidised food shows that the whole exercise of ensuring food security to the people through a National Food Security Act is a dishonest proposal of the government,” the Campaign said. The Rangarajan panel, formed to study the recommendations of the National Advisory Council on the proposed National Food Security Bill, has recommended in a report that the APL or ‘general category' of beneficiaries under the PDS not be included for legal entitlement under the proposed Act on considerations of administrative feasibility and current levels of procurement of food grains and production. Besides the Member-secretary of the Planning Commission and Economic Adviser to the Finance Ministry, the Union Secretaries of Food, Agriculture and Expenditure were members of the panel. The Campaign wants the government to ensure that the proposed Food Security Bill was expanded to ensure ‘nutrition' security by covering vulnerable groups and providing for universal mid-day meals and anganwadi services, maternity entitlements and social security pensions. The signatories to the Campaign include representatives of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information, National Federation of Indian Women, New Trade Union Initiative, Breast Feeding Promotion Network of India, National Alliance of People's Movements, Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti, National Conference of Dalit Organisations, Human Rights Law Network,

Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture, People's Union for Civil Liberties, National Forum for Single Women's Rights, Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, Rashtriya Viklang Manch and the National Campaign Committee for Unorganised Sector Workers. (Hindu, 11/01/2011)

NAC won't give up on food security proposals The Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council (NAC) has decided to stick to its recommendations made on the draft National Food Security Bill at its meeting on October 23 last, though these have been rejected by a government committee led by C. Rangarajan, who heads the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council. The committee was constituted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to examine the feasibility of the NAC's recommendations. A note, presented by the NAC's Working Group on Food Security, on Monday dwelt on the proposed entitlements as well as the setting up of a grievance redress mechanism for the scheme. This is to ensure that if proposed beneficiaries are deprived of their entitlements, they will be able to approach a designated authority and secure their rights. The NAC members felt that the note, which was deliberated on, should be “supported with more analytical content” and placed before the NAC at its next meeting on January 21. Evidently, the NAC is trying to make one more effort to persuade the government to reconsider its position. At its October 23 meeting, the NAC suggested that legal entitlements to subsidised foodgrains be extended to at least 75 per cent of the population — 90 per cent in rural areas and 50 per cent in urban areas. Further, priority households (46 per cent in rural areas and 28 per cent in urban areas) should be entitled to 35 kg (equivalent to 7 kg per person) every month at a subsidised price of Re. 1 a kg for millets, Rs. 2 for wheat and Rs.3 for rice, with rural coverage adjusted State-wise based on the Planning Commission's 2004-05 poverty estimates. The general households (44 per cent in rural areas and 22 per cent in urban areas), the NAC had said, should be entitled to 20 kg (equivalent to 4 kg per person) every month at a price not exceeding 50 per cent of the existing Minimum Support Price for millets, wheat and rice. On January 7, the Rangarajan Committee rejected the NAC proposals on the grounds that raising procurement levels further would “lead to a lower availability of foodgrains for the open market, pushing up prices.” Instead, while favouring mandatory entitlement of subsidised foodgrains to the ‘priority' category as recommended by the NAC, it said it was not feasible to extend to the ‘general' category legal entitlement of subsidised foodgrains under the Public Distribution System. The panel also suggested that the subsidised grain for the poor be linked to inflation and indexed to the Consumer Price Index in the coming years. This means the rate at which 35 kg of wheat (at Rs. 2 a kg) and rice (Rs. 3 a kg) is given per month to a poor household will be revised at a later date. Additionally, the Rangarajan Committee has totally ignored the NAC's recommendations on non-PDS entitlements such as child nutrition programmes, maternity entitlements and destitute feeding, intended to address India's massive “nutritional deficiencies.” Authority On Monday, the NAC discussed the proposed redress mechanism, not just for the Food Security Bill but also for all existing rights-based schemes such as those relating to education, health and employment as well. What is being proposed is an authority at the district and block levels, which can be approached by anyone. The authority would be independent of the District Collector, NAC sources told The Hindu. (Hindu, 11/01/2011)

Rangarajan panel rejects NAC recommendation The C. Rangarajan Committee on the proposed food security bill favours legal entitlement of subsidised foodgrains to the poor (below the poverty line), but has rejected the National Advisory Council's recommendation that above the poverty line (APL) households be partially covered, saying it is not feasible at the current levels of grain production and procurement. “The assured delivery of subsidised foodgrains be restricted to the really needy, and the rest can be covered through an executive order with varying quantums, depending upon the availability of foodgrains,” the committee said in its report, officially released on Thursday. The NAC, headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, had recommended 75 per cent coverage of the population in two phases, with 90 per cent rural and 50 per cent urban population included. The Rangarajan Committee, however, suggested that 46 per cent of the

rural population and 28 per cent of the urban population be entitled to 35 kg of rice at Rs. 3 a kg or wheat at Rs. 2 a kg per household a month. The figures were arrived at by adding 10 per cent beneficiaries (to cover those on the margins) to the Tendulkar Committee's poverty estimates of 41.8 per cent of the rural poor and 25.7 per cent of the urban poor. The poverty figures matched the ones provided by the NAC. “Going by the NAC proposal, the grain requirement would be 74 million tonnes in the final phase in 2014, while the total grain availability with the government in 2011-12 and 2013-14 is likely to be 56.35 million tonnes and 57.61 million tonnes respectively, based on the current production and procurement trends.” “It will not be possible to implement the NAC-recommended food entitlements for either of the phases,” said the committee, set up by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to “examine” the NAC's recommendations. The committee said the price of subsidised foodgrains for the poor (BPL) might be linked to inflation and indexed to the Consumer Price Index in the coming years, and the price at which wheat and rice was to be made available to the non-poor (APL) might be linked to the minimum support price (MSP). It estimated the subsidy bill at Rs. 83,000 crore for the entitled groups at 100 per cent lifting. “Since the NAC recommendations create a legal obligation for the government, it is important to mandate enforceable entitlements, keeping in mind the availability of grain,” the report said. (Hindu, 14/01/2011)

It’s for States to identify BPL families The Prime Minister’s Expert Committee on the proposed National Food Security Bill has differed with the National Advisory Council not only on its recommendation for subsidised foodgrains entitlement for the non-poor population, but has also recommended that the identification of the poor beneficiaries for the proposed benefit be done by State governments and not by central agencies as suggested by Sonia Gandhi. The panel, headed by C. Rangarajan, Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, has upheld the view of the Union Home Ministry that conducting a socio-economic census along with the caste census — to be undertaken in June this year — will not only “delay’’ the caste census, but combining it with Below Poverty Line (BPL) enumeration “will attract interest groups which may impact the integrity of the census and caste enumeration.’’ “Caste enumeration is individual based while the other two (socio-economic and economic census) are individual, household and enterprise based. In view of this, caste enumeration be done as a stand-alone exercise,’’ the Home Ministry said. The Rangarajan panel agreed and said that “the central government will indicate the percentage of the entitled population, while the actual identification of the beneficiaries [proposed under the food security] will be the responsibility of the States.’’ Ms. Gandhi as chairperson of the NAC had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh suggesting that the socio-economic census that will form the basis of the BPL survey, be conducted by the Registrar General of India and the Census Commissioner to do away with errors of inclusion and exclusion and to save resources. (Hindu, 14/01/2011)

India needs growth to pull people out of poverty JAIPUR: India can play a leadership role on the global stage and emerge as the third largest economy in the world after the US and China, said Arvind Panagariya said here on Thursday while delivering the 5th Raj Krishna Memorial lecture in the University of Rajasthan. "India's economy is growing at over 12% in dollar terms. It's $1.3 trillion economy can the reach the size of China $ 6 trillion in 15 years if it continues to grow at the current pace," said Panagariya, professor of economics at the Columbia University. Referring to Barack Obama's India has risen' statement, he said people from India and Indian origin are doing great work in different countries in various fields, except for sports. "There are 3 lakh students studying in the US, the UK and Canada, and they can enhance India's sway when they enter the global workforce," he added. But there are lot of areas where India needs to do catch-up. Its share of global output, trade and other developmental parameters are still far below the levels of advanced economies. "India's share of world trade is still less than 2%. Per capita income wise, India ranks at 153 position in the world. To play a leadership role India needs reforms. It has done so when the Narashima Rao led a minority government assisted by left parties. The government then put an end to the Licence Raj, allowed foreign banks to operate in India and lifted lot of restrictions on FEMA," he said. But reforms have slowed down during the UPA's regime, he said, adding that a lot could have done during the 7-year period of the UPA government. Growth is necessary not only to play a bigger role at the global high table but also to provide jobs and pull millions out of poverty. "Economic growth plays a vital role in bringing down the level of poverty and it is down to 27% in 2004 from 47% in 1980s. Also, the growth has helped the government to roll out programmes like NREGA," said Panagariya While prosperity has reached some sections of the poor and brought new consumers to the market place, the growth in agricultural production has failed to

keep pace, resulting in higher inflation. "Agriculture's contribution to gross domestic production has fallen to 15%, and the best rates of growth it clocked were during 1980-1990, when it posted a growth of 4.4%. In contrast, industry and services are expanding at 11-12% growth," said Panagariya, adding, "Still about 55% of people in India are dependant on agriculture." Moreover, as Panagariya puts it, 27% people below poverty line means a huge 300 million of the country's population. He said that manufacturing sector, which has the potential to create large number of employment opportunities, is not growing as fast as it should. The sector's share of total output has remained at a stagnant 15% since the economy was opened in 1992. (TOI, 14/01/2011)

NHRC hauls up state over KBK backwardness BHUBANESWAR: The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Tuesday came down heavily on the state government's performance in the KBK region, stating that the condition of the poor has not changed over the years. The commission's remarks came during the hearing of a 2010 case in which 12 children had allegedly died of starvation in Nabarangpur and Balangir districts. "Rampant poverty, malnutrition and hunger are still prevalent in the region, which makes children more susceptible to starvation," the commission's general secretary, K S Money, quoted the NHRC's full bench as observing. "The immediate reason for the deaths may not be starvation, but so many children dying within such a short span of time in a particular area is a matter to be looked into," Money said. The NHRC chairman, K G Balakrishnan, and three other members reached here on Monday for a two-day camp sitting, during which they are scheduled to hear at least 60 cases of human rights violations. Money said in the backdrop of the alleged starvation deaths, various government officials had placed their viewpoints, but the commission was not satisfied. "We have asked for a detail report from the state government on health, education, civil supply and the public distribution system in the region. The NHRC has been monitoring the long-term action plan, but it is not satisfied with the compliance of the government," he said. The NHRC functionary further said the commission had earlier recommended that the government take a host of measures for improvement of the condition of the people. "But the state government did not act upon it," he pointed out. He said the NHRC had suo motto taken up the starvation issue, which was later investigated by its special rapporteur, Damodar Sarangi. During the hearing, the issue of malaria deaths came up. The state government sought to impress upon the commission that Orissa is a malaria-prone area. The commission, however, disapproved the government's stand and said: "The healthcare delivery system is very weak and things have not changed even after the NHRC's recommendations to take steps to improve the system in 2007." (TOI, 19/01/2011)

NHRC asks Govt to stem the rot in KBK The focus of the full bench of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) its two day sitting here was KBK. The seriousness can be gauged from the fact that a separate session was devoted to discuss in details and the corrective measures taken by the State apparatus on the chronic poverty, starvation, hunger deaths, malnutrition, problems relating to health measures, education, and deficiencies in PDS in the region. Despite the monitoring of the situation for the last two years, the measures taken by the State Government to ameliorate the problems is still a far cry and the action taken is far from satisfactory, the Commission felt. Since, the Revised Long Term Action Plan was revived on the recommendation of the NHRC; the Commission will continue to monitor the plight of the KBK till the root causes of the problems is identified and steps taken to stem the rot, the panel cautioned the State Administration. Briefing the reporters after the conclusion of the two day camp sitting here on the proceedings, the NHRC panel said, it had directed the State Government to effectively coordinate and implement various schemes for the KBK districts. The Commission also directed the State to depute an officer to present before the Commission on March 21, with the status on the implementation of the recommendation of the Commission, welfare schemes including PDS, health, special security schemes in the backward region, it said. The panel which expressed serious concern over the food security of the poor people who have left out of the BPL list in the region, has directed the State Civil Supplies authorities to send a detailed report on the issue of bogus ration cards particularly in the KBK region and action taken against the corrupt officials involved. The panel Chairman also sought a full compliance report on hunger and malnutrition in the KBK for the final recommendation of the Commission to be uploaded in its website. He said the report given by the State on the starvation deaths in the KBK was assigned to the cause of anemia , which was a symptom of malnutrition and lack of food. “We have to look into the holistic approach for solution of the chronic human problem”, he said. He said during the two days, 52 cases were taken up in the single

bench hearing and eight of them were finally disposed of. In case of custodial death in Mayurbhanj district, the commission had recommended monetary relief of `3 lakh to next to the kin of the deceased. Apprehending that human rights violation cases may rise in future due to the massive industrialisation relating the land acquisition, rehabilitation, compensation etc in the State, the Commission had bit of caution to the Government. He said the land less should be given land for the land and reasonable compensation should be given to the victim along with proper rehabilitation. The panel has emphasised on immediate departmental action against the concerned officers responsible for the human rights violations. He directed the Government for a human approach of the police officers towards the weaker sections following the large scale allegations of police atrocities. (Pioneer, 20/01/2011)

Sonia-led NAC to push govt on food net NEW DELHI: The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council has decided to stick to its recommendations on the Food Security Act which have been turned down by a committee headed by PM's chief economic adviser C Rangarajan. The NAC has released the version of the Bill it has drafted to explain that its recommendations on the size of population to be covered by the Food Security Act were feasible. The Rangarajan committee has cited food availability and government's inability to procure it to say that NAC's recommendations were impractical. The decision not to settle for a restrained approach suggested by Rangarajan and publicise NAC's case was taken at a meeting of the body on Friday. Sonia Gandhi was in chair. Sources said that the Congress chief told members of the council to explain to the people why they thought that the government could provide food security to more people than the Rangarajan panel feels it could. Just as they have detailed the reason for opposing NAC's recommendations, we should also explain why we think that it was possible to implement the recommendations of the NAC, the Congress chief is learnt to have told the NAC members. The Congress chief has pushed for a wider food safety net. NAC members feel that the government's approach is conservative. Their decision may lead the government to re-visit the issue, especially if Sonia Gandhi digs her heel in. There are differences within the NAC as well. The meeting on Friday saw members of the council differ on key provisions of the draft food security Bill. The differences got so wide that Jean Dreze informed the group that he would no more be part of the Bill drafting group. Dreze had earlier criticised the working of the NAC and the way the government was disregarding its recommendations. In the meeting, N C Saxena recommended that the entire scheduled tribes and scheduled castes not be made mandatory beneficiaries of the subsidised food scheme. Most members of the council did not agree with the proposal, but came around to accept Saxena's position. The PMO has taken a cautious line on the extent of food security cover. It has told the NAC that keeping food subsidies low was its priority and that the number of beneficiaries and the type of entitlements provided would have to dovetailed to a larger agenda of fiscal prudence. The NAC, in consultations with the concerned ministries and lawyers within and outside the government, has come close to finalising a draft Bill. But even as it was preparing the Bill, the PMO set up the Rangarajan committee which recommended that the Bill be shaved down to offer a bare minimum of entitlements and not look at turning other nutrition schemes into legal rights as well. The feud has now erupted within the NAC as well with some members claiming the Bill in its current shape was more tended to please the civil society rather than address the concerns of the government. (TOI, 23/01/2011)

Government can't provide food to all: Chief Justice Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia Sunday said the government can't be expected to provide food, education and healthcare to all but advocated relief to the deprived sections. Addressing the 17th Commonwealth Law Conference, he said while it was not possible to have access for everyone to everything, the needs of those below the poverty line should be addressed. "Equal access to food cannot be given. You cannot have access to all in a population of one billion but those who are below the poverty line can have it," he said.He pointed out that after the financial meltdown, there was a paradigm shift from equality in the sense of equal access to minimum core approach. "Basic amenities, basic social goods can always be provided and in that we can balance it with development. At the same time, we can help the common man," he said. "It is the paramount duty of judges to adopt an approach in interpretation which enhances social welfare," he said. More than 800 delegates, including judges, jurists and legal luminaries, from 54 Commonwealth countries are attending the five-day conference which began Saturday. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday formally inaugurated the biennial conference, held in

India after a gap of four decades. Referring to the case of a HIV patient who could not afford a second line of treatment, the chief justice said that in such cases it was not open to the government to toll the bell of financial crunch. "In such cases, we have to apply minimum core approach. If you have a paradigm shift from equal access to deprivation, then for those classes of persons who are totally deprived the government cannot say we will not provide the requisite relief," he said. "I believe that if a person comes below the poverty line, subject to certain caveats, it is not open for the government to say we have no funds because the government is also obliged to administer certain economic reforms but Article 41 of the Constitution says very clearly that it will depend on the resources," Justice Kapadia said. "After financial meltdown in even Western countries, jurisprudence is taking a different view than what it used to take in the past. They are now saying we should refigure and revisit welfarism which is called reconfiguration of welfare rights and which is also called as reconfiguration of discrimination laws," he added. The chief justice said that while industrial growth and service sector growth was around 12 percent, there was stagnation in agriculture at four percent. He called it as one of the reasons for scarcity of food and said it is having chain reaction on inflation. He urged Manmohan Singh to consider introducing Indian Regulatory Service on the lines of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and Indian Police Service (IPS). "This is very important step because we need experts. You can't have a commissioner of income tax sitting in SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) deciding certain matters. We need experts in regulatory laws by which a common man will get the benefit," he said. Citing the example of electricity tariff, he said the regulator may apply amortization principle to bring down the cost. "The common man will get the electricity at much cheaper rate. Similarly, we can bring in least cost methods," he said.Justice Kapadia called for convergence. "Now the time has come when we should not segregate economics and other fields, including technology from law. This is how law should develop and this is how you can take equality to poor people." (Deccan Herald, 07/02/2011)

NAC: PM's panel got its economics wrong NEW DELHI: The Prime Minister-appointed Rangarajan Committee reviewing the draft food security bill has got its economics and logic wrong, a majority of members on the National Advisory Council has said as part of a draft report. Ready to take on the PMO, the council is nearing finalization of the report that will point out errors in the Rangarajan report and defend the NAC's food security bill. The rebuttal is bound to widen the rift between the PMO and the NAC, which is headed by Congress chief Sonia Gandhi. The council had drafted the food security bill, which the PM asked his chief economic advisor to review. The committee was packed with economists and bureaucrats seen agreeable to the PMO's insistence on keeping subsidies low. Expectedly, it criticised the bill for under-estimating costs and recommended a more minimalist version — reducing the number of beneficiaries and keeping those above the poverty line out. It also ignored proposals that required turning government's nutrition schemes into legal entitlements. NAC members, taken aback at even the setting up of the committee, decided to defend their proposals and got the go-ahead from Sonia to put a counter-viewpoint out before the public. The council's working group on the food bill then drafted the response in consultation with all the members. The report, yet to be adopted formally by the entire NAC, has been accepted by a majority with the exception of some such as Planning Commission member Narendra Jadhav. In its analysis, NAC claims Rangarajan panel erred in calculating the subsidy involved, wrongly argued that the proposed bill would lead to inflation and was off the mark in predicting that the government would never have enough foodgrain to distribute in the first place. NAC members analyzed Rangarajan's calculations and found them lacking in rigour and logic. It's shown how the PMO panel inflated the costs and under-estimated government's ability to provide grain. The draft report will have to be adopted by entire NAC and cleared by the chairperson before it is released. (TOI, 10/02/2011)

Centre will table Right to Food Act in Parliament, says Manmohan Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Thursday that the government was committed to bring to Parliament a Right to Food Act which would serve as a viable safety net for the poor and the vulnerable sections among whom malnutrition was particularly high. Addressing an international conference on ‘Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health,' the Prime Minister said such issues were “topical” as the world faced rising food prices and there was growing recognition that climate change may endanger food security in many developing countries. The issue was particularly important in developing countries where agriculture was the mainstay of a large number of people. “Studies in India show some correlation between agricultural performance of a State and the nutritional status of its people. States that

have high agricultural productivity also have lower malnutrition rates for both adults and children.” Noting that India had not done as much as it should have to promote modernisation of agriculture marketing, Dr. Singh said he had asked the Planning Commission and the Agriculture Ministry to focus particularly on this aspect in the 12th Five Year Plan beginning 2012. “Agricultural diversification in food requires backup support in terms of viable delivery and marketing chains. Modernisation of marketing inevitably implies a greater interaction and involvement of the private sector. We will work with State governments to ease whatever implications may exist in this regard,” he said. The conference was organised by the United States think tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute. Observing that malnutrition was not only a consequence of poverty but also a cause of it, Dr. Singh said a malnourished child was more vulnerable to disease and less able to earn a leaving. The complexity of causes that underlie malnutrition called for a multi-sectoral strategy to address the three key issues of availability, access and absorption. The Prime Minister emphasised that availability and access to foodgrains was only part of the solution. “With economic growth and changing dietary habits, demand for fruits and vegetables, milk and milk products, meat and fish, is steadily increasing. This is entirely natural. Good nutrition requires a balanced diet through multiple food sources.” “Rapid growth in agriculture, particularly that which diversifies the food basket while ensuring adequate availability of energy and other basic nutrients, combined with other activities and initiatives in health, hygiene and women's education will help overcome poor health, hunger and malnutrition,” he added. Earlier, addressing a press conference, eminent agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan said controlling food inflation in urban areas would be “difficult” unless the supply chain was improved. He recalled how food inflation in the 1960s was checked through government intervention by opening super bazaar and ‘apna' bazaars. “The National Food Security Act will, to some degree, meet the challenge of nutrition security.” “The government will have to bring the Bill to Parliament and to the Standing Committee,” he said in reply to a question on the differences between the National Advisory Council that wants near-universalisation of the public distribution system and the C. Rangarajan experts group that suggested that only the vulnerable sections (below poverty line population) be covered under the proposed Bill. David Nabarro, U.N. Special Representative on Food Security and Nutrition, said nations had to ensure that rising food prices did not negatively impact the poor and vulnerable sections. Answering a question on futures trade in farm commodities, he said: “Yes, certain kinds of commercialisation in agricultural commodities lead to accentuation of price volatility but other kinds of trade may act as a smoother and reflector.” (Hindu, 11/02/2011)

Poverty forces man to kill wife, two kids, self Apparently tired of abject poverty, a tribal man on Sunday allegedly axed his wife and two children to death, before killing himself, at village Kharo in the district. Phooli Adivasi (49) also tried to kill his other daughter, Munna (15) before hanging himself. An injured Munna has been admitted to the district hospital, police said. Another son, Vinod (16) was lucky as he was out when the incident took place. When he returned home, he found his mother Jamuni (45) brother Pramod (8) and sister Maya (10) lying dead in the pool of blood at their kuccha house. The deceased had two other sons and a daughter, who are all married and live outside Tikamgarh district, Vinod said police.Vinod said that the family had not had meals for the last two days, and this drove his father to take the extreme step. “His financial condition was worrisome but he used to work,” Tikamgarh collector Akilesh Shrivastava said, denying that Phooli committed the grisly act because of starvation. “I sent sub-divisional magistrate AR Dhok there, who informed me that the deceased had food stuffs at his place,” he said. On the other hand, Tikamgarh zilla panchayat member Chatarpal Singh and others claimed that there was no food in the house. (Pioneer, 21/02/2011)

Mother kills her two kids, hangs self BANGALORE: Depressed over her husband's suicide and financial hiccups, a 30-year-old mother allegedly hanged her two children and later hung herself in Bidadi police station limits, late on Saturday night. The mother, R Gowramma, 12-year-old daughter Indushree, 10-year-old son Chaitanya were seen hanging from one ceiling hook, Bidadi police said. All three were residing at Gowramma's elder brother Hanumantharaju's residence in Bheemanakuppe near Kengeri. The incident came to light on Sunday morning, when Gowramma's mother Kempamma grew suspicious as she did not recieve any response from the locked room. The previous night, Gowramma along with her children retired to the room at around 10 pm, after having dinner with her brother and mother. Gowramma was residing with her brother after her husband Ramesh committed suicide a year back, due to alleged financial problems. According

to Bidadi police, Kempamma repeatedly knocked on the door around 8 am and later called her son. " Hanumantharaju peeped through the window and saw three bodies hanging from the ceiling," police said. Immediately, he broke open the door, went inside and found a suicide note written by Gowramma, who was part of the non-teaching staff at a private school in Kengeri. The gist of the letter reads: "My children and I are taking this step as we are dejected in life. No one is responsible for our death." (TOI, 21/02/2011)

Food subsidy bill to rise by 27 p.c. this year The country’s food subsidy bill is expected to jump by 27 per cent to Rs 74,231 crore in the 2010—11 fiscal, the Lok Sabha was told today. This is due to a rise in support price and higher procurement and distribution of foodgrains via ratio shops. Last year, the government’s food subsidy bill stood at Rs 58,242.45 crore. “The amount allocated for food subsidy during 2010—11 is Rs 59,354.56 crore...Based on the actual offtake, an additional requirement of Rs 14,877.63 crore has been sought for the current year,” Food Minister K.V. Thomas said in a written reply. The food subsidy bill rose due to an increase in procurement of foodgrains for the Central Pool, higher minimum support price and additional allocation of rice and wheat to the poor via ration shops and open market, he said. The procurement cost of foodgrains has gone up but the selling price of rice and wheat via ration shops has been kept unchanged since 2002, he added. The minister said the subsidy bill also increased due to higher offtake of subsidised foodgrains under the public distribution system and other welfare schemes. Currently, the government supplies 35 kg of rice or wheat at subsidised rates to 6.52 crore families living below poverty line (BPL) every month. Wheat is supplied at Rs 4.15/kg and rice at Rs 5.65/kg to BPL families. Depending on the foodgrains availability, the Centre also supplies the subsidised rice and wheat to 11.5 crore families living above poverty line (APL). Wheat and rice are sold to them at Rs 6.10/kg and Rs 8.30/kg, respectively. (Hindu, 23/02/2011)

Despite growth, hunger pangs reality for millions Although finance minister Pranab Mukherjee had promised food security and inclusive growth in his budget speech last year, hunger continues to stalk over 300 million citizens of the country. India slipped to 67th place in the Global Hunger Index 2010 rankings of 122 countries prepared by International Food Policy Research Institute. An Oxford University report said that 410 million Indians live in poverty. While there may be nit-picking over the actual numbers, but one thing is clear — there is widespread if not alarming hunger and malnutrition in the country despite a high growth trajectory. The situation dramatically worsened in the past year with vegetable prices zooming up by over 24%. Since March last year, potato prices rose by over 75% and onion rocketed up by a jaw-dropping 300% for a few months pushing these staple vegetables out reach of large sections of people. Inflation had become a vehicle for sustaining malnutrition and hunger in the country. Yet, the government continues to drag its feet on such crucial measures as providing cheap food grain to the people according to a study by the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), a Delhi based think tank. The single biggest step that could reduce hunger and bring down prices of essential food items - universalisation of the public distribution system - has been stuck in wrangling between policy wonks. CBGA's study points out that providing cheap wheat and rice to about 24 crore households in the country would cost the exchequer Rs.1,44,141 crore. The government is already spending Rs.55,578 crore on providing food subsidies as per 2010-11 budget estimates. So, the net additional cost would be Rs.88,563 crore per year. Many economists argue that India can ill afford spending such huge amounts on food subsidies. But calling such arguments "unsubstantiated", CBGA said that food subsidies amount to less than 1% of India's GDP and less than 4% of the combined expenditure incurred by state governments and Union government annually. "Financial constraints can never be an excuse for denying the basic needs of the masses, and even less so when the government is prepared to forego tax revenue (as exemptions and deductions in both direct and indirect taxes) to the extent of Rs.5,02,299 crore for a single fiscal year (2009-10)," says the CBGA study. The argument that there are not enough foodgrain to distribute to all the people too comes in for criticism in the study. As per the Second Advance Estimates released on 12 February 2010, the procurement of wheat and rice was 253.9 lakh tonnes and 236.9 lakh tonnes respectively last year, which accounted for only about 23 percent of the total food production. Universal public distribution would involve procurement of 1008 lakh tonnes of foodgrain. Enhancing the procurement levels can easily do this, the study says. Last year in August, the Supreme Court had directed that 17.8 million tonnes of grain in danger of rotting in government godowns should be distributed to the people. This was after there were

reports that 67,000 tonnes of wheat had been spoiled in the rainy season due to insufficient protection in godowns. Such tragic waste could be avoided if the government were to streamline the public distribution system, plug leakage and build infrastructure to deal with storage and transportation issues. (TOI, 23/02/2011)

‘South Odisha has highest concentration of poverty’ Southern Odisha region is being debated at the national level as one of the country’s most poverty-ridden regions. Everyone, except the Government, is concerned about the plight of the people of the region, stated senior State BJP leader and former Minister Bijay Mohapatra here on Friday. Mohapatra was speaking at a debate ‘Industrialisation and poverty’ organised by the Intellectual Forum where eminent people, including Prof Prahallad Panda and Ram Chandra Panda, also shared their views. Mohapatra said the Saxena Committee reports that 85 per cent of the people in Odisha are below the poverty line (BPL) while the Tendulkar Committee suggests the figure as 57 per cent and the State Government claim it as only 47 per cent. Yet, the Government is not prepared to accept the harsh reality. “When we do not diagnose the disease, how would the disease be cured, he questioned while suggesting that people have to find a way out as the Government is not sensible. He observed that industrialisation cannot wipe out poverty. There are industries in southern tribal districts like Rayagada, where poverty still prevails. Industrialisation is for the industrialists, not for the people. What is required is increasing the purchasing power of the people. Mohapatra pointed out that the Government’s expenditure in the southern region is huge. In the general service and social service sectors as much as `40,000 crore has been spent. Especially in the tribal areas, programmes, including that for KBK development, have been launched. But 90 per cent of the funds are going to the pockets of contractors, not to the people. As a result, despite the huge expenditure, the region and its people continue to remain poor, said Mohapatra. (Pioneer, 07/03/2011)

NAC Food Bill proposals ‘short of expectation' The Right to Food Campaign on Monday announced its decision to launch a country-wide protest against the National Advisory Council's framework for the proposed National Food Security Bill, which, they said, fell short of people's expectation of a comprehensive food security bill that addressed nutrition and livelihood issues. “Even the budget proposals show no commitment to food security of people,” Campaign Convener Kavita Srivastava told journalists here. “By proposing to continue with the system of targeting [the public distribution system beneficiaries], the NAC has failed to seize the current opportunity of a proposed food security bill which will honestly address the issue of hunger,'' she said. The NAC had put up a note on its framework for the National Food Security Bill, along with an explanatory note, for public comments on its website. Monday was the last date for sending feedback to the NAC. The NAC, chaired by AICC president Sonia Gandhi, will meet here on March 24 to discuss the suggestions on its draft Bill. “The NAC's framework food production has been delinked from food security. Hence measures that could ensure food security through ensuring food production have been relegated to ‘Enabling Provisions.' These provisions are a wish-list, but there are no legal guarantees that they are enforceable at any time, even in the future,” Ms. Srivastava pointed out. She was accompanied by Mira Shiva of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, Arun Gupta of Breast Feeding Promotion Network of India, Gautam Modi of New Trade Union Initiative, Dipti Sinha and Riya of the Campaign. Ms. Srivastava said the framework proposed by the NAC provided guarantee to a “fragmented PDS, limited maternal and child rights, provision of cooked food to the vulnerable sections, ration cards in the name of women and portability of ration cards to migrant labour.” While providing for an independent redressal authority, along with civil and criminal liabilities on denial of entitlements, the NAC framework had eliminated old age, widow's and family pensions although the Supreme Court brought it into the regime. The Campaign expressed its “disappointment” with NAC moving away from the idea of a “universal PDS.” “The division of the population into categories of ‘general', ‘priority' and ‘excluded' is just a continuation of the artificial division of households into Above Poverty Line (APL) and Below Poverty Line (BPL) which, experience has shown, excludes the majority of the poor. The government's own surveys have shown huge errors of exclusion in the identification of BPL families.” (Hindu, 09/03/2011)

Don't blame the poor, it is Bush language: Brinda Lashing out at the United Progressive Alliance-II for following anti-people policies and not even sparing school-going children in the general budget by levying taxes on their textbooks and stationary,

Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat on Thursday urged the government not to blame the poor for the food inflation. “By attributing the rise in prices to increasing consumption by the poor, the government is putting the blame for food inflation on the poor and thereby asking the common man to live with it,” she said in the Rajya Sabha, while participating in a debate on the budget. Ms. Karat said the government was linking food inflation to higher purchasing power of the poor resulting from employment programmes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. “What kind of an argument is this when there is so much malnourishment in the country. The same argument was given by the former United States President, George W. Bush, when global food prices rose in 2008. I request the Finance Minister not to blame the poor for eating more. This is George Bush's language,” she remarked. The CPI(M) leader described price rise as ‘unlegislated tax' and said the budget favoured only the rich and the corporates, while resource mobilisation had been shifted to the working class. “This is clear by increasing contribution of indirect taxes [which are distributed to all — the poor and the rich] to the total tax kitty,” she said. Referring to the contentious issue of levy of 5 per cent service tax on health diagnostics, Ms. Karat said the government wanted to send across a message to the people of the country that ‘do not dare to fall sick, even your sickness is going to be taxed.' On petroleum prices, she charged the government with giving selective and misleading data. “Rising petroleum prices are adding to the woes of the common man. The government earned tax revenue of Rs. 1,11,000 crore from this sector last year and tax revenue under this head is going to increase by Rs. 24,000 crore to Rs. 1,35,000 crore this fiscal,” Ms. Karat said. She said that on the basic price of retail petrol at Rs. 51.64 per litre, 48 per cent was tax. On diesel, the tax stood at 32 per cent. Ms. Karat also opposed direct transfer of cash to the poor, stating that in countries such as Brazil this was an additional benefit and did not substitute existing subsidies. She said the below poverty line (BPL) data, on which these schemes would depend, were dubious. The government had reduced subsidy on fertilizer, which would lead to increase in prices of soil nutrients. On direct cash transfer to poor families, Ms. Karat said it could not substitute or replace subsidies given by the government on food, kerosene and other products. (Hindu, 11/03/2011)

40,000 women trafficked to Delhi from Sundargarh The twin-city Police Commissionerate’s Integrated Anti -Human Trafficking Unit (IAHTU) in collaboration with Jajnaseni Anti-trafficking Network organised a one-day awareness program on combating human trafficking here on Thursday. In the alarming present global scenario more than eight lakhs woman and 12 lakhs children have been trafficked through out the World. Four lakhs women have been trafficked to Delhi only, in which 40,000 people from Sundargarh were the victims. Disparity in gender, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and better job opportunity is the causes for human trafficking where the woman and children are the worst sufferers, said DCP Headquarter Rekha Lohani. Shockingly, the middleman and the brokers are trafficking the human resources through various placement agencies not only for exploitation but also for illegal human organ trading. Unfortunately, total 8,800 cases were lodged in the country in between the year 1997 to 2001, but only 17 cases were lodged in the Commissionerate Police though the reality is different, added Lohani. “In our judiciary system trafficking is an illegal offence, the involved middleman and the agencies should get seven to 14 years imprisonment,” said High Court advocate Sujata Jena. “Displacement of human being from one place to another place by threatening, luring, exchange of money and false commitment is trafficking, said convener Jajnaseni Bishakhi Bhanja. Our organisation and members found that in Nayagarh, Kedrapada, Balasore and Jajpur districts the woman trafficked by the pimps with a commitment to arrange a bride for the poor grooms, similarly in Sundargarh, Keonjhar and Sambalpur woman are displaced to big cities for the domestic jobs, in KBK districts the labour dalals give lucrative offer to the poor people in other cities”. All the dignitaries had a common opinion that “Human trafficking can be stopped with the awareness among the common people. In case of marriage register it, for manual labour fill up the forms available at the district level, if any middleman convincing the local people about a better job option than check his identity and inform the local police”. Mahila Commission chairpersons Jyoti Panigrahi, Saila Behera, Kasturi Mohapatra were present in the awareness programme. (Pioneer, 11/03/2011)

Poverty claims life of one, three others struggling Poverty claimed the life of one person in Bokaro while three others of the same family are struggling between life and death at Bokaro General Hospital. A father of four, along with his wife and two daughters tried to commit suicide by consuming Sulphas tablets over his inability to provide for his family in Bokaro. The hapless family members were admitted to Bokaro General Hospital, where three of them are fighting

for their lives while one of them Anuradha Kumari (18) was declared as brought dead, police said. According to the police on Tuesday midnight, a poverty stricken Devendra Nath Singh (45) tried to commit suicide along with his wife Chanda Devi (38) at their home at Bhojpur colony Chas (Bokaro). Priya Kumari (12), Devendra’s daughter told the police that around 2 pm she along with her sister Anuradha (18) suddenly woke up and saw their parents consuming poison. “Later we decided to end our lives too and we both consumed the same tablets,” she said before the magistrate Punam Kachhap. Officer in-charge Aqueel Ahmed said that at that time two more children Ayush (4) and Rimjhim (6) were in deep sleep and were safe as the duo did not consume the tablets. Devendra Nath Singh resides in Chas town along with his wife, three daughters and a son. He was working in a private firm but he could not meet his domestic expenditures and remained in tension. Upset due to difficult financial conditions and his inability to meet the needs of his children, he decided to kill himself along with his wife. Jharkhand is faced with such depressing situations despite its separation from Bihar-which many thought was slowing down the State’s growth rate. However, the State has continuously been sliding down the growth ladder after breaking away from Bihar. Though Jharkhand’s per capita income is 20177, which is more than that of Bihar, the tribal state is grappling at 9.52 per cent growth rate, according to Economic survey, 2008-09. This is less than what Bihar has clocked. (Pioneer, 24/03/2011)

Rotten grain being supplied to tribal areas: CPI-M NEW DELHI: Rotten grain with rat stool is being supplied to tribals by government agencies, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) MP Brinda Karat said Thursday and demanded that a monitoring agency be set up to ensure this does not happen. Raising the issue during zero hour in the Rajya Sabha, the CPI-M member said: "The wheat and rice that government agencies are sending to tribal areas is rotten and even has rat stool in it." "Tribals have no value. I challenge if some official can eat this," she said displaying samples of the wheat despite the chair's plea not to do so. "Please instruct the government to formulate special monitoring agency to check what is being sent to tribal areas," she requested the chair. Several other members from opposition parties backed her in the demand. (TOI, 24/03/2011)

'Yes storage, sub-standard grain are problems' The government on Thursday admitted to problems in storage as well as supply of sub-standard foodgrains to the poor after senior Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat expressed serious concern in the Rajya Sabha over grain rotting. “I do admit,” Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said after Ms. Karat charged the government with supplying rotten foodgrains to remote tribal areas. She showed samples of spoiled wheat and rice in the House. “It is a fact that we could not create surplus storage capacity to our requirement. I do admit… rotten wheat,” Mr. Mukherjee said replying to a debate on the Finance Bill later. Ms. Karat said: “I challenge, let one big officer eat rotis from this wheat.” She demanded the recall of sub-standard foodgrains from government godowns and their replacement with better quality rations. “Is there no value for the lives of Adivasis to whom the grain was supplied via government ration shops?” she added. With Ms. Karat demanding a monitoring agency to check the quality of foodgrains, Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman K. Rahman Khan called on the entire House to associate itself with her mention. He assured it that the government would keep in mind the sentiments of the members. The former corporate sector executive, A.K. Ganguly (nominated), warned that India was sitting on a grain-bomb as wheat production was expected to cross 82 million tonnes this year. “The country needs an additional storage capacity of 1.5 lakh tonnes, but only 1 per cent was created in 2010,” he said. Mr. Ganguly pointed out that while Russia and China were facing wheat crop failure, India was poised to reap a good harvest. “Let us not convert the fortune of plenty into calamity,” he said, with noted agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan associating himself with the issues raised. (Hindu, 25/03/2011)

Ministry rejects NAC methodology of identifying pri ority households The Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council celebrated on Thursday its first major success, in its second avatar, in blocking the government's efforts to dilute the landmark Right to Information Act. But, if that was the good news, the bad news is that the Rural Development Ministry has rejected the NAC's methodology of identifying “priority households” — or those living below the poverty line (BPL). Worse, the Ministry has recommended that only those Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe households who display also one of a list of socio-economic vulnerabilities will be eligible for the priority tag for purposes of the National Food Security Bill (NFSB). Clearly, such an exclusion could prove politically disastrous to the United Progressive Alliance. So even as the Food Ministry is yet to relent on the NAC's suggestions on

legal food entitlements, the Rural Development Ministry's alternative methodology of identifying “priority households” could create another headache. The NAC feels that the Ministry's methodology will result in some of the most vulnerable slipping through the cracks. NAC member Harsh Mander, who heads the Working Group on Food Security, told TheHindu that given that identification of the beneficiaries of the proposed NFSB would determine the success of the government's food security project, the “social inclusion approach was critical.” On Thursday, therefore, the consensus was that the Rural Development Ministry be asked once again to accept the NAC's methodology of identifying priority households. It was already communicated, in a letter written by Ms. Gandhi, to Union Rural Development Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh in January, and the latter replied putting forward an alternative plan. To protect the most vulnerable from exclusion errors, the NAC had sought the mandatory inclusion of eight groups — these are households belonging to “Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups” (PTGs); “Maha Dalit Groups;” those headed by single women; minors; disabled persons; those dependent predominantly on alms for survival; where any member is a bonded labourer; and finally, the homeless. Beyond these eight categories, the NAC wants the highest priority accorded to the inclusion of the SCs and the STs. NAC sources said the Rural Development Ministry wanted to accept only two of the eight categories suggested — households belonging to the PTGs and the Maha Dalit Groups, and only those SCs and STs who display one of the vulnerabilities that it has drawn up. In place of the other six categories suggested by the NAC, the Ministry had an alternative list, which covers the NAC's categories, barring households headed by the disabled or bonded labourers. The NAC has therefore reiterated that “the highest priority” should be given to inclusion of the SCs and the STs in the identification of “priority groups” for the NFSB. Meanwhile, Aruna Roy, convener of the Working Group on Transparency, Accountability and Governance, informed the NAC that after several rounds of consultations with the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the two arrived at an agreement on all issues except the one amendment proposed by the DoPT restricting all RTI applications to “one subject matter.” Areas of agreement include the enhancement of the word limit from 250 to 500 and dropping the Rules on abatement of an RTI application on the death of an applicant. With regard to limiting all RTI applications to “one subject matter,” the NAC has decided to recommend once again that the restriction to “one subject matter” be dropped from the purview of the proposed amendments to the RTI rules. (Hindu, 25/03/2011)

9,881 MTs of paddy worth over Rs 9.15 crore deterio rated in Punjab As much as 9,881 metric tonnes (MT) of paddy, valuing `9.15 crore ruined in dust, because of the inept handling of the grain by the Punjab Government. The startling facts were brought into light in the latest report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India. Rapping the PAFC authorities for non-seriousness, the CAG blamed them for their failure in taking timely and appropriate actions for milling of the paddy which led to deterioration of 9881 MTs of paddy. Even the authorities’ repeated efforts to dispose of 9881 MT unmilled paddy could not be realised. For, the Company concerned — at Khamano grain market in Fatehgarh Sahib — decided to invite open tenders or auction in November 2009 for the same, and the disposal of paddy was awaited till September 2010. The State authorities had even failed to revert even after over a year when the CAG referred the matter to the management and Government in December 2009. Till September 2010, the reply was awaited too. The revelations are significant in the light of the shortage of foodgrains storage capacity that led to rotting of around 60,000 MT foodgrains in Punjab alone during the previous Kharif season, with over thousand tonnes more rotting across the nation. The problem started when the selected miller — Lakshmi Energy and Foods Limited (LEFL) — could not could not lift 28492 MT of paddy procured during October-November 2007 as the procuring agencies had declared it as a defaulter firm. As a result, the Company stored the paddy in its own custody. Later on 19 November, 2007, the LEFL offered to mill entire paddy by the due date, February 28, 2008, on the condition that the company agreed to accept the pattern of advance rice — under which the miller would deliver rice in advance to the Food Corporation of India (FCI) on its own and later claimed paddy from procuring agencies. However, the company turned down the offer. The CAG in its report remarked that the “non-seriousness and failure to take timely and appropriate actions by the company” for milling of paddy led to deterioration of 9881 MT paddy valuing `9.15 crore. The exact amount of loss would be known only after disposal of the deteriorated paddy. CAG pointed out that it was “unacceptable on whatever grounds that in the midst of poverty in the country, food grains are allowed to become waste”. Concluding, it added, “It is necessary that Government investigate the issue to fix accountability and take appropriate action against the errant officials.” (Pioneer, 25/03/2011)

The Prime Minister-appointed panel on Food and Public Distribution System (F&PDS) headed by Deputy Chairman Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia has suggested that the current system of distributing PDS foodgrain per household should be replaced with per capita allocation. According to National Sample Survey (NSS) data, lower income households have more members per family than higher income households, the panel has said in its draft report. Justifying its suggestion as a “progressive step” that will benefit poor households, it said: “The grain entitlement may be converted from a per household to a per individual monthly entitlement.” The panel — which had the chief ministers of Chhattisgarh and Assam as its members along with the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council chairman C Rangarajan — has said that the 6.52-crore ration card cap fixed by the government on the basis of 1993-94 poverty estimates resulted into lower per family foodgrain availability. Consequently, it has asked the government to notify the revised BPL figures based on latest poverty estimates of the Planning Commission “at the earliest”. The draft report has appended the statewise poverty figures based on the Tendulkar Committee report, which it says has been “accepted by the Planning Commission”. According to those figures, the government should provide additional foodgrain to at least about 44 million more below poverty line people if it goes by the per capita availability norm. As per the annexures, in all the Centre should make available cheap foodgrain to at least 407.61 million people in states based on the Tendulkar Committee estimates of the 2004-2005 NSS survey. But the Central government has been allocating foodgrain to about 363.9 million BPL people, and that too on 1993-94 poverty estimates. Accordingly, if the Census 2011 figures are taken into account, about 450.19 million BPL people would be eligible for cheap foodgrain if the Tendulkar Committee estimate of 37.2 per cent poverty is followed. With the government planning to bring in a food guarantee law soon, the suggestions of this panel may re-define the basis of food guarantee at the individual level. In this context, the panel, which was Constituted by the Prime Minister in April last year, has said the per capita entitlement will “enable food security benefits to be inextricably linked to the UID”. In fact, the draft report has suggested a “next generation smart card system” where the subsidy amount to each individual will be “loaded into the smart card” through which the beneficiary can buy a set of items “such as wheat, rice, eggs, meat, pulses from any FPS (fair price shops) or designated retail outlets”. Under this system, leakages during transportation and storage of foodgrain will be minimised as the beneficiaries will have subsidy cards that they can use at any retail outlet or PDS shop. The recommendations of this panel is likely to be put up for consideration during the chief ministers’ meeting that may be held later this month. (IE, 02/05/2011)

5 m tonnes more foodgrain for BPL families Sidestepping the demand for allowing foodgrain exports to ease storage space crunch, the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on food security on Monday decided to offload 5 million tonnes of foodgrain for the below poverty line (BPL) families across the country, sources said. This allocation will be over and above the normal allocation to BPL families under the public distribution system. The additional foodgrain will be made available at same prices that BPL families avail their normal quota of foodgrain. Under the PDS, the BPL households can avail 35 kg of foodgrain where wheat is priced at Rs 4.15 per kg while rice is priced at Rs 5.65 per kg. The EGoM headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee did not take up the discussion on the national food security Bill. The meeting also decided to extend subsidised edible oil distribution through PDS scheme till September this year. (IE, 03/05/2011)

Kerala’s Adivasis living in abject poverty Despite the hundreds of crores of rupees being spent by the Government on several programmes for the uplift and welfare of Adivasis in Kerala, a large number of them are still struggling to keep themselves alive. According to official records, about five percent of the Adivasis residing in Kerala’s forests are having food only a once a day. The “children of the forests” are living in such hardships when the Government is claiming to provide benefits like free rice and all other benefits to the economically backward sections. The harshest of the hardships are being borne by five sections of the Adivasis living in the State’s forests. As per the findings of a survey conducted jointly by the State Local Administration Department and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Development Department, five percent of the people in these five sections have food only once a day. These five extremely weaker sections are Kattunaikkan, Cholanaikkan, Kadar, Kurumbar and Koraga. Twenty-six percent families of these five sections do not have ration cards and therefore are not receiving subsidized food items sold through ration shops. There are 6,738 families in these sections living in the forests of Kasaragod Wayanad, Malappuram, Kozhikode, Palakkad and Thrissur. As many as 1,782 families among them do not have

ration cards. As per the survey findings released last month, 374 families can afford to have food only once a day. The survey also shows that these five sections are far behind other Adivasi tribes in the areas of healthcare, education and housing. Sources in the Government said that steps were being planned on the basis of the findings of the survey that had started back in 2008. As per these measures, a special package of Rs 148 crore would be implemented to alleviate the hardships of these sections. Focus of the package would be on providing food, healthcare, housing and education to the Adivasis. Implementation of the package is to be completed within March 31, 2015. The Government is planning to utilize the services of voluntary organizations under its control for the implementation of the package. Sources said discussions were progressing with Attappadi Hill Area Development Society (Ahads) and Mahila Samakhya controlled by the Union Human Resources Development Ministry for outsourcing their services. However, NGOs working for the welfare of the tribespeople and Adivasi organizations say the reason for their misery was not lack of allotment of funds. “The allotted funds are either leaked from the bags on the way to the Adivasi colonies. Or they go into the wrong hands,” said Prakasan, an Adivasi of Aaralam, Kannur. The shocking revelations about the abject poverty among the extremely weaker sections among the Adivasis have come close on the heels of the reports that large numbers of Adivasi women have been victims of sexual exploitation. According to a recent hearing, there are 48 unwed mothers in the 20 Adivasi Oors (villages) in Palakkad district’s Attappadi alone. Of these 48 unwed mothers, 23 had suffered exploitation in the hands of non-Adivasis. The guilty in almost all these instances had escaped mainly because of the lack of awareness among the girls about the legal procedures for filing complaints and also because of the apathy on the part of the police. (Pioneer, 04/05/2011)

No BPL card, no roof overhead RANCHI: Hundreds of families displaced by the ongoing anti-encroachment drive in Jharkhand have got another raw deal from the state government which has decided to rehabilitate only those who have documents to prove they belong in the below poverty line (BPL) category. Over 2,000 families were rendered homeless in Ranchi, Dhanbad, Bokaro and Jamshedpur following the demolition drive. Senior government officials said a large section of the affected families would be deprived of the rehabilitation plan. Citing the example of Islam Nagar, the officials said around 1,175 people submitted application for rehabilitation. "After scrutiny, it was found only 131 applicants were eligible for rehabilitation as they fulfilled the condition of minimum 20 years of residence. We feel a similar situation will arise when displaced people will have to submit BPL certificate," said an official. He added more than 50 per cent of the displaced families affected by the ongoing anti-encroachment drive would be deprived of benefits of rehabilitation. "The state government has plans to rehabilitate 8,000 BPL families affected by the ongoing anti-encroachment drive but if we stick to the norms, most displaced families will be left out," said the official. Amar Yadav, a displaced resident of Naga Baba Khatal, said most people living there did not have any proof. "We only hope state government relaxes its rule and rehabilitates all displaced families instead of limiting the benefit to only BPL families who have proper proof, as suggested by the three-member committee headed by development commissioner Debashish Gupta," said Yadav. State urban development secretary N M Kulkarni, who was a member of the committee, said the government had plans to give relief to only BPL families. "Everyone cannot be rehabilitated. Final decision on the criterion on which the families will be rehabilitated is to be taken by the state government and if there is any change needed cabinet will decide," said Kulkarni. (TOI, 04/05/2011)

Jharkhand third malnourished State: NFHS-3 Jharkhand is one of the susceptible States to food insecurity and malnutrition. The recent data released by the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) shows that the tribal population in the State is prone to malnutrition; food insecurity as being one of the prime reasons. Malnutrition is the single most important risk factor for many diseases. According to data, around 59.2 per cent of children under the age of three are underweight, 49 per cent are stunted and 25 per cent are wasted in State. The proportion experiencing malnutrition is higher in rural areas in the disadvantaged groups, particularly the Scheduled Tribes. Jharkhand is the third malnourished State in the country. Talking about the food insecurity resulting to malnutrition prevailing in the State, State convener of Public Health Resource Network Dr Suranjeen Prasad said, “The chances of being malnourished among girls are 50 per cent while the percentage goes up to 70 in case of tribal girl. The percentage of malnourished people in rural areas of Jharkhand is around 90 per cent.” He further said, “Food insecurity, reduction in forest and forest

produced food are some of the prime factors for the malnutrition in the State especially among the tribal.” Comparing the southern tribal states with the tribal areas of the State, he said, “The major reason of the tribal being malnourished in the State is poor agriculture and live stock.” On being asked about the tribal owning lands, Adivasi Welfare Commissioner Praveen Toppo said, “The persons whose lands are rescued are given an amount of Rs 5,000 by the Government to start farming. The problem of owning a land by the tribal has been solved somehow after the implementation of Forest Right Act.” The cases are even more alarming in case of women. Based on the body mass index, 41per cent of women are undernourished and 73 per cent women have some degree of anaemia in State resulting to maternal deaths and risk to health. Sensing the immediacy of the situation, the State Government is all set to open 14 new malnutrition treatment centres at the rural areas of the State. “The main shortcoming of this Act is that it allows the tribal to own a land if living for more than 75 years but now most of those people are forced to stay away by the Forest Department and hence they can’t claim for their own lands leaving them helpless despite the Act,” concluded director of Tribal Study Centre Shiv Shankar Oraon. (Pioneer, 05/05/2011)

Descendents of 1857 heroes languish in poverty LIBASPUR (SONIPAT): The first freedom struggle of India, which began on May 10, 1857 is a history for many. But in this village, the 154-year-old struggle is far from over as descendents of revolutionary Udmi Ram and many of his companions are still fighting the consequences of the uprising. Har Deva, a decendent of Udmi Ram, a legendary but unsung hero of 1857 revolution, is living in utter poverty in the village and works as a landless labourer to earn a living for his family. He is also fighting a legal case to reclaim the land of his ancestors, which was auctioned by the Britishers as a punishment for participating in the uprising. There are many other families like this, who are engaged in legal battle for years obviously bearing the burnt of the daredevilry of their forefathers, who challenged the might of the British rule and sacrificed their lives, sources said. Udmi Ram was an unsung hero of the first freedom struggle. But in this region, he is a legend who became an incomparable example of cruelty of the Britishers, who crushed the rebellion with a heavy hand. He was tied to a Peepal tree and nailed in the palms of both hands and legs and was left to starve to death. His wife Ratni Devi was also given similar treatment. And 22 of his accomplices, residents of the same village, were crushed under the wheels of a stone-made road-roller. The stone that stood testimony to the cruelty of Britishers is still placed in a park in Sonipat in public display. Rajesh Kashyap, a researcher with Matu Ram chair in the Maharshi Dayanand University at Rohtak, said that Udmi Ram and his group had killed some Britishers by attacking their convoy when they were going to a camp in Sonipat from Delhi, during the uprising. The revolutionaries did not harm British women and kept them at a safe place in the village chaupal. "After overcoming the rebellion, Britishers started a hunt for Udmi and his accomplices. Sita Ram, a resident of neighbouring Radhdhana village, tipped them off about Udmi Ram and his companions." The British soldiers then swooped down on the village and looted the residents. They also arrested Udmi and his men after an encounter. "The Britishers then unleashed cruelty on Udmi and his young wife, who were nailed on a tree inside the village. It is said that Udmi Ram died on the 35th day with his palms and legs tagged to the tree, while 22 other youths of the village were crushed under a stone-made heavy road-roller", Rajesh said, adding that other surviving residents of the village fled after witnessing the massacre by Britishers. The Britishers rewarded traitor Sita Ram when they auctioned the entire 550 acres land of Libaspur village in his favour for a paltry Rs 200 soon after the mutiny was over. When the fleeing residents returned after spending nearly a decade at other places, they found that they had been stripped off their land. They again started their struggle through legal channels to acquire their land back, which was the only source of livelihood for them. A resident of the village, Pradeep Saroha, who has also filed a case in the high court to reclaim ownership of the land of their ancestors, said that after freedom, the court maintained that residents of Libaspur could reclaim their ownership only by paying the price of land to Sita Ram in installments. "While some persons managed to get back their land, many others are still struggling, as they either do not have enough resources to pay up or were denied ownership by the influential progeny of Sita Ram". (TOI, 10/05/2011)

Poverty and tum-tums, their bane KOPPAL: An eerie silence prevails at Bommasagar, a remote village situated off NH 13. The news of the death of 12 villagers in an accident on Monday morning has sent them into a state of shock. The 12 farm labourers died when the tum-tum (a kind of autorickshaw for carrying goods) in which they were travelling

collided head on with a tipper between Kukkanpalli and Valbellary villages on National Highway 13. They were on their way to a poultry farm in search of work. As Koppal district is one of the backward districts of Hyderabad-Karnataka region, most of the poor families travel to distant places to work as daily wage workers for their livelihood. Most of them work in poultries, stone-cutting mills and do other odd jobs. Bommasandra Tanda is one of backward tandas. Hooligamma (40), one of the victims, was also looking for work. Had she heeded her husband Yemunappa's advice, not only she, even her daughter Shantamma (14) and daughter-in-law Nethra (21) would have not died in the accident, say relatives. But it seems poverty weighed more on Hooligamma's mind than her husband's advice to not go to work. The couple has six daughters and one son. When Hooligamma was about to board the tum-tum, her husband had asked her to call off the trip as he felt their daughter Shantamma who had recently attained puberty would not be up to doing hard work. However, some villagers felt that with many mouths to feed, it was right for Hooligamma to go in search of work. "Though public transport is available, it is cheaper to travel by tum-tum,'' says Nagappa. Despite a ban on carrying passengers, tum-tums in the district are doing a brisk business in transporting people from their villages to workplaces. According to official sources, there are over 800 tum-tums plying in the district. Of these, 500 are active in rural areas. However, there appeared to be contradictions in the claims of officials and the transport minister on the issue. Though both agreed that these transporters were illegally doing business, they were divided on the issue of permitting these vehicles to carrying passengers. While Koppal RTO Shivaraj Patil pointed out that the government had recently registered these tum-tums as motor cabs permitting to carry 5+1 passengers, transport minister R Ashoka said these vehicles were banned and they had no permission to carry passengers. RTO Patil said despite repeated appeals and awareness programmes, people were opting to travel in these vehicles. "We have booked hundreds of cases against drivers and owners of these vehicles, but contractors are prompting the vehicle owners to carry labourers in these vehicles to workplaces,'' he said. Admitting to increase in the number of accidents involving tum-tums, Ashoka said: "I will discuss the issue with the senior officials and soon an action plan will be released to stop tum-tums from carrying passengers,'' he added. (TOI, 10/05/2011)

No water, no jobs, no visiting leader The only time most villagers of Sonkupui, Hirapur or Natundi in Purulia have ever seen an election candidate is when they have been bundled to a rally. The day before the election, villagers say a run-up has yet again gone without a visit by any leader. The elderly Basuni Singh Sardar of Natundi, for instance, says she has never seen a candidate or an MLA in her lifetime. “I have voted many times. Another election will come but no politician will ever visit us,” she says. Natundi, part of Balarampur seat, is as much wracked by poverty and neglect as other villages in this belt. Joydev Mahuchiar, an Advasi of Hirapur, part of Baghmundi seat, says they have been struggling with a water crisis for two months, the absence of NREGA jobs for six months. Of the village’s 18 families, each living below the poverty line, 16 have job cards. Jobs are even scarcer in Sonkupui village close to Ayodhya Hills, from where several youths have left their homes in the last six months. Mangal Singh Manki, who was working with the Matha forest range office in Baghmundi, lost his job card to a Maoist attack. Maoists had set the office on fire last October, destroying in the process 100-odd job cards deposited there by villagers. With the forest office yet to replace these, most youths have gone looking for jobs elsewhere. Manki, one of the few who stayed back, says most wells have dried up but no leader has ever come to address the crisis, jobs or water. Yet all villagers will vote, he says. Drought is a feature almost every year of Balarampur-Bagmundi, one of the most backward blocks of a backward district. In a district of 29 lakh people, only 2.02 lakh families got NREGA jobs for 32 days in 2010-11 and 10,087 families for 100 days, according to the NREGA website. Of Balarampur’s 1.18 lakh people and Baghmundi’s 1.12 lakh, 16,602 and 29,000 persons got NREGA jobs that lasted an average 16 days. The district administration lists 57.5 and 41.86 per cent of the population in Balarampur and Baghmundi as living below the poverty line. Candidates from both sides agree the region is backward, the Left tempering the admission with examples of some progress and the Trinamool Congress using the backwardness as a poll plank. Shantiram Mahato, the Trinamool candidate in Balarampur, says 2 lakh people have left the district for want of work and this is his main issue. He admits it has not been possible for him to cover all villages in his campaign. Baghmundi’s Forward Bloc candidate Mangal Mahato says the poverty cannot be denied but adds the Left Front has improved the situation in its 34 years in power. Maheswar Kuiri, the district’s saha-sabhadhitipati, admits youths have been leaving but guesses the count cannot be more than a lakh. The district, which has traditionally voted Left, is one of the few where the Trinamool-led alliance could not

make a dent in the last general polls. (IE, 10/05/2011)

More grain for BPL families in two weeks, Centre in forms court Responding to the concern expressed by the Supreme Court over malnutrition and starvation deaths, the Centre on Tuesday informed it of the decision to make an additional allocation of 50 lakh tonnes of rice and wheat to all States/Union Territories for distribution to Below the Poverty Line families at BPL prices in two weeks. Additional Solicitor-General Mohan Parasaran made this submission before a Bench comprising Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma, hearing a petition filed by the People's Union for Civil Liberties on the streamlining of the public distribution system (PDS). The Bench recorded the undertaking and asked the government to take immediate steps to prevent malnutrition deaths. Earlier, senior counsel Colin Gonzalves submitted that according to the National Family Health Survey 3 (2006) of the Government of India, the under-five mortality rate in the country “is 74 for every 1,000 livebirths. There are 2.4 crore livebirths in India each year.” Mr. Gonzalves said: “The total number of deaths of children under the age of five [with a mortality rate of 74 per 1,000] is 17.8 lakh. Since the child malnutrition rate, according to the NFHS 3, is 46 per cent, we can directly attribute this to malnutrition. Thus, 8.8 lakh children die every year in India due to malnutrition. This roughly translates to 75,000 children dying every month due to malnutrition and an astounding 2,500 child deaths every day. More than a hundred children are dying every hour across the country due to malnutrition.” Counsel also brought to the court's notice a report that foodgrains stored along the highways near Chandigarh were reduced to ashes after the rotten product caught fire. The Bench sought a report on this episode. Justice Bhandari once again told Mr. Parasaran about the need for striking a balance between excess procurement and the storage problem, as the cost of procurement had also gone up. Even if a small portion of the foodgrains that was going to waste in storage was distributed to the hungry poor, poverty and malnutrition could be reduced to a great extent. When Mr. Gonzalves said about 2,500-3,000 child deaths were taking place due to malnutrition, Justice Bhandari said: “Even three deaths a day are bad for this nation. You [the government] should take immediate steps to prevent malnutrition. You have an exceptionally good crop. You procure to the extent you can store. We are not against procurement. Whatever you procure, store it properly. The rest you can distribute to the starving people, instead of allowing it to go waste.” In response to the court notice, the Planning Commission filed an affidavit on BPL estimates, and Solicitor-General Gopal Subramaniam briefly explained the methodology adopted by various experts. The affidavit said the Tendulkar Committee recommendations, applied to the 2004-2005 National Sample Survey (NSS) data, yielded a higher estimate of poverty ratio of 37.2 per cent for the country as a whole, comprising 25.7 per cent in urban areas and 41.8 per cent in rural areas. “The Planning Commission will apply this methodology to the large sample NSS Consumption Expenditure Survey of 2009-2010, which is shortly going to become available,” it said. It said: “The poverty line emerging from the Tendulkar methodology is a consumption of Rs.579 per capital per month for urban areas and Rs.447 per capital per month for rural areas at the 2004-2005 prices. The poverty line would be significantly higher if updated to reflect the current prices.” It said: “The Planning Commission is aware that many States' complaint is that people who are indisputably poor are left out of the BPL list because of the cap imposed by the Central government. It is not denied that this is indeed the case in many States. However, the cap is not the reason for this as non-entitled persons are given BPL cards, leaving those entitled to BPL cards uncovered.” (Hindu, 11/05/2011)

Rs 20/day is cutoff for urban poverty: Plan panel NEW DELHI: An urban Indian spending a penny more than Rs 578 a month – roughly Rs 20 a day – on all his basic needs cannot be termed poor and would not receive social benefits and subsidies given by the Centre to BPL citizens, the Planning Commission has said. The commission told the Supreme Court on Tuesday that a city dweller cannot be termed poor if his average monthly spends exceed Rs 31 on rent and conveyance, Rs 18 on education, Rs 25 on medicines or Rs 36.5 on vegetables. It said these were the average monthly expenditure levels per capita across the country it was using to decide the official 'poverty line'. Critics have called it the starvation line – a spending level below which people would be rendered destitute. The government's eligibility criteria for the rural poor is even more stringent. If a villager spends more than Rs 15 a day he is not poor, according to the Plan panel's statisticians. Based on these consumption levels, the commission has declared that only 41.8% of the rural population is poor and a mere 25.7% of the urban Indians need food, shelter and social benefits from the government. The commission's figures are based on 2004-05 prices. But even at current price levels, these cutoffs are

pretty low – around Rs 35 a day for urban dwellers and Rs 20 for rural Indians – experts said on the basis of back-of-envelope calculations. These experts pointed out that when the government pushes for the Food Security Bill and other social schemes, it would be using these cutoffs to keep people out of the social security net. Anyone spending more than this will be denied subsidized food, accommodation, pensions and medical treatment targeted at the BPL population. The Union government argued in Supreme Court that these are merely the Centre's cutoffs. The states can shell out money from their own pockets for others they find 'poor'. The government, however, admitted that states have been crying foul over this for long. But the Centre blamed the states for incorrectly identifying the beneficiaries of BPL programmes. These cutoffs will help the Centre claim that poverty in the country is low and getting lower. In material terms, this will reduce the government's subsidy 'burden' in the future. This is not the first time that the government has touted such low figures for identifying poverty. The latest figures are, in fact, an improvement from earlier estimates. Experts said the government has in the past used lower population levels (through old estimates and census data) to keep the number of the 'officially poor' low. (TOI, 11/05/2011)

Ministries refuse to file affidavit on hunger death s NEW DELHI: The health and women & child development ministries have refused to give an affidavit to the Supreme Court on how many children die of hunger in India every year. UNICEF says 50% of all the deaths of children aged below five years are from malnutrition. That works out to 2,438 children dying every day for lack of food. But no one in the government is ready to stick its neck out and say it or differ from these statistics. This put the Additional Solicitor General appearing for the government in a piquant position on Wednesday when he informed the court that the ministries were unwilling to sign on the affidavit stating such figures. When he requested the apex court to give directions, the SC bench instead asked the ASG to convene a meeting of all the ministries and get an affidavit filed by them by Friday. For the ministries, the concern would also remain that if the affidavit is filed in their name, they too would be pulled into the case where the government and its bodies have often had to hear harsh words from the apex court and defend their record at solving the child malnourishment problem. It would be a tough task considering that the petitioners have been citing data such as Bangladesh's much better record despite their much lower economic growth levels. Earlier, the Planning Commission had pleaded itself into the case defending the government's poverty line. It had contended that anyone spending more than Rs 20 a day in cities and Rs 15 a day in rural India was not poor as per its formula. For the government, the court calling for such figures has gained significance and created worries at the highest level. The petitioners in the case had marshaled together such information to demand that the government universalize the distribution of subsidized food in the 150 poorest districts. They have been asking for a wider food security net while the government has been taking a more minimalist approach keeping the fiscal subsidy burden in mind. The government in its on-going tussle with the National Advisory Council has already once rejected this proposal. (TOI, 12/05/2011)

Free rice distribution scheme from June 1 The scheme of free distribution of 20 kg rice to beneficiaries under the public distribution system (PDS) will come into force on June 1. At present, rice is given at Re. 1 a kg to those who are entitled to receive the commodity. As per the existing norms, rice of four kg per adult and two kg per child is supplied subject to a minimum of 12 kg and a maximum of 20 kg per month per card except in the Nilgiris where the minimum will be 16 kg and the maximum 24 kg. According to a government order issued on Tuesday, the existing norms will continue. In the case of Antodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) beneficiaries, rice of 35 kg will be given free. The government order follows the announcement of Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Monday on her first visit to the Secretariat. Her party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, had made an electoral promise regarding the provision of rice free. Sources say that the latest decision of the government will cover 18.62 lakh AAY beneficiaries and 1.83 crore card holders who are entitled to rice. This will result in an increase of the food subsidy by Rs.500 crore. As for the Chief Minister's another announcement on the marriage assistance schemes, an official explains that under the scheme for educated poor women, prospective beneficiaries belonging to tribal communities should have passed fifth standard, and 10{+t}{+h}standard in respect of other communities. Apart from Rs. 25,000, four gram gold for making sacred thread would be given. In respect of the scheme for graduate women or diploma holders, the assistance of Rs. 50,000 and four gram gold would be given. The limit on parental annual income for the two schemes is Rs. 24,000. Approximately, 1.7 lakh women are expected to be covered

under the two schemes. This would cost about Rs.290 crore additionally to the exchequer. The government has issued another order, increasing the duration of maternity leave to married women government servants from 90 days to 180 days, which may be spread over from the pre-confinement rest to post-confinement recuperation at the option of the servant. (Hindu, 18/05/2011)

59 pc of PDS grains do not reach households: WB rep ort Despite India spending over two per cent of GDP in social protection schemes, their returns in terms of poverty reduction are yet to reach full potential, a World Bank report has said, pointing to “high leakages” in PDS and “uneven implementation” of MNREGA across states. The report, the first comprehensive review of India’s social welfare and anti-poverty initiatives, said about 60 per cent of grains released by government under public distribution system did not reach households in 2004-05. “India spends over two per cent of GDP in social protection programmes, more than many other developing nations and there are pockets of good performance but the overall returns in terms of poverty reduction and improvement in livelihood have not reached their full potential,” World Bank lead economist John Blomquist said while presenting the new report here. The study, commissioned in 2004 after request from the Planning Commission, said while poorer states get larger share of central budget, they spend relatively less per poor rural households, mostly due to capacity constraints like lack of staff and technological tools and implementation problems. According to the report “Social Protection for a Changing India”, the effect of PDS on poverty reduction is low due to “high leakages to non-poor” and weak administrative features. “Only 41 per cent of the grain released by government reached households, as per 2004-05 figures,” Mr. Blomquist said. While states like Tamil Nadu showed high level of purchase of PDS grains (80 per cent rural households and 50 per cent urban), it was below five per cent in Bihar and Punjab. Mr. Blomquist also pointed to new initiatives in some states like introduction of food coupons and smart cards to increase accountability and said in the long term, the idea of moving towards cash transfers instead of grains can be toyed with. On Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme, the report said it has significantly high coverage and impressive inclusion of scheduled castes (31 per cent), scheduled tribes (25 per cent) and women (50 per cent). But it also pointed to “uneven implementation” of MNREGA across states. While about 90 per cent rural household reaped benefits of the scheme in Rajasthan, the percentage was less than 20 per cent in Punjab, Haryana, Kerala and Gujarat. “Localised studies point to some evidence of leakage of funds, delay in fund transfers to panchayats,” Mr. Blomquist said. The Bank said the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna is showing major advantages while other programmes like Sampoorna Grameen Rojgar Yojna, Annapurna scheme, Indira Awas Yojna and midday meal scheme have recorded “mixed performance“. The Bank suggested that the government can consolidate various schemes into three core flagship programmes and give block grants to states to finance related schemes. (Hindu, 19/05/2011)

Fed up with penury, Dalit couple ends life Dalit emancipation may be the buzzword in the Mayawati regime but the community still remains downtrodden. In a heart-rending incident in Ambedkar Nagar district, just 150 Kms from Lucknow, a Dalit couple committed suicide while their six-month-old girl starved to death lying beside the bodies of her parents who lived in a Kanshi Ram Garib Awas Yojana flat. Police recovered the bodies on Wednesday when the neighbours complained of a stench emanating from the house. According to reports, Dinesh, a native of Ratuapar area of Ataraulia in Azamgarh district had come to Ambedkar Nagar in search of livelihood and worked as painter. He had taken house number 981 of Kanshi Ram Awas Yojana on rent from Asharam, who lives in Delhi. For six months Dinesh toiled hard but failed to earn enough for his family. Fed up with the hardships, Dinesh took the extreme step and consumed sulphas tablets and gave it to his wife Sunita also on Tuesday. While the couple died, their six-month-old infant girl remained lying between the bodies of her parents for more than 24 hours died of hunger. On Wednesday, the neighbours called the police when they became aware of the stench emanating from the house that had not been opened for over 24 hours. The police broke open the door and found the three lying dead. The blisters on the body of Dinesh suggested that he had died at least 24 hours earlier. The bodies were sent for post-mortem. While admitting that the couple may have committed suicide, the police said as the autopsy failed to pinpoint the cause of death, the visceras had been preserved. "It appears that they have committed suicide as a bottle of sulphas was recovered from the room," police officials in Lucknow said. However, sources confirmed that while the adults had died after consuming sulphas, the child died of starvation. (Pioneer, 19/05/2011)

BPL poverty cap placed at 46% The Below the Poverty Line (BPL) census, approved by the Union Cabinet on Thursday, will be an exercise in identifying households that will fit the bill within the poverty cap of 46 per cent of the rural population of India. The identification of the 46 per cent poverty cap, estimated by the Planning Commission, will be done through a set of automatic exclusion and automatic inclusion criteria, and the remaining households will be classified through seven assigned deprivation indicators. At the same time, State-wise caps based on the S.D. Tendulkar methodology have been allowed for better targeting of those living below the poverty line. The 46 per cent cap is lower than the 50 per cent suggested by the N.C. Saxena Committee. Officials have remained silent on the displeasure of the Supreme Court on placing a cap on the BPL list. The same process will be adopted for the urban population as well, but the poverty cap to qualify for social benefits during the 12th Five Year Plan will be decided later by the Planning Commission and the Union government. Union Rural Development Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said the headcount would start on June 30 and be completed by December as per the criteria decided. With the modifications of the Saxena Committee recommendations, the preferential treatment to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has been scaled down, while Muslims have been left out of this treatment. Exclusion criteria: At least 28 per cent of rural households is likely to be excluded under the automatic exclusion criteria, which includes owning at least one two-wheeler; a fishing board; three-wheeler mechanised agricultural equipment; a kisan credit card with a limit of Rs. 50,000; 2.5 acre irrigated land with one irrigation equipment; having government employment; earnings of more than Rs.10,000 per month; and paying income tax. At least three-four per cent of the households will be compulsorily included under the five automatic inclusion criteria, according to Rural Development Secretary B.K. Sinha. The Ministry has accepted four suggestions from the Saxena Committee and one from the National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by Sonia Gandhi — households without shelter; the destitute or those living on alms; primitive tribal groups; legally released bonded labourers; and manual scavengers. The rest will have to satisfy the seven other deprivation indicators on a scale from a minimum to seven, where the order of priority in the BPL list will be from the largest number of deprivations to the smallest number of deprivations. These factors are: households with only one room with kucha walls and roof; households with no adult member between 16 and 59 years of age; female-headed household with no adult male; households with a disabled member; households with no able-bodied adult member; SC and ST households with no literate adult above 25 years of age; and landless households deriving a major part of their income from manual casual labour. The enumeration will be conducted electronically by a team of two members including a computer data entry operator. The computer will be loaded with the scanned national population register data and the enumerator will only be required to enter the caste or religion of the household for the caste census. For the BPL census, household information will be elicited through a question-answer process where the incumbent will be required to confirm or deny the information. After completion of the process, the answers will be read out and an acknowledgment slip issued to the household. While the information related to caste and religion will be loaded into the central server and passed on to the Registrar-General of India for statistical processing, this information will not be placed in public domain. Information relating to households will be displaced later at the gram sabhas for public verification. The Ministry has placed an order for six lakh pieces of such equipment, each of which costs Rs. 3,900, and the equipment will be given to the gram panchayats after use. All the information will be UID compatible. (Hindu, 20/05/2011)

Call to universalise PDS Members of the Right to Food Campaign and the Delhi State Campaign staged a protest in the Capital on Monday against the Planning Commission's low poverty line for determining benefits of government-run schemes. The protesters said the Planning Commission's “flawed arguments and insistence on keeping a low poverty line” had excluded a large section of society from even the present day minimalistic food entitlements provided by the Government. “The current system of setting caps on the number of Below poverty Line families eligible for subsidised foodgrains at BPL and AAY prices based on the estimates of poverty by the Planning Commission, using consumption expenditure data of the NSS, is widely recognised as being deeply flawed…the current official poverty line is no more than a ‘destitution line'..” said a statement issued by the protesters. Seeking universalisation of basic services including health, education, employment and food, they said: “In relation to PDS, the Right to Food Campaign demands that all residents of the country must be covered and that the PDS should play the role of ensuring food

security for all.” The campaign argued that the country needs a universal PDS because the expanded scheme has the potential to generate greater demand for food grains resulting in higher production and can contribute significantly to the revival of agriculture. “When a large number of people are included in the PDS, then there is a greater chance of public pressure. Any system that is targeted only for the poor tends to be poorly monitored,” the campaign claims, adding, “In India, half the population is undernourished and almost 80 per cent of the people are living at very meagre levels of income. In such a situation a targeted PDS linked to some arbitrary defined poverty line is bound to fail.” (Hindu, 24/05/2011)

NAC members protest against plan panel's move for n ew poverty line NEW DELHI: A spoon, 25 grams of dal, half a slice of bread, some washing powder and a torn piece of kurta, in total worth Rs 20. That is what three key National Advisory Council members -- Jean Dreze, Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander -- brought for the deputy chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Monday protesting against the Rs 20 per day person expenditure poverty line it has decided upon as a cut off. The three NAC members led a group of about 60-70 noisy protestors carrying dozens of packets – all worth Rs 20 – and asked the Planning Commission members to survive a day in Delhi on the contents and shouted slogans waving placards mocking the poverty line The presence of the trio, who have been locked in an argument against the 'fiscal prudence wallahs' in the government while pushing for an expansive food security bill, marked a scaling up of the battle between the two sides. They were leading the Right To Food campaigners protesting against how the Planning Commission defines poverty in the country. The storm had been brewing since the Planning Commission impleaded itself in the case in the Supreme Court and claimed that an expenditure of Rs 20 per day on essentials for those living in urban areas and Rs 15 for those living in rural India was enough to keep them out of poverty and, therefore, out of government's social safety net. The poverty line of Rs 20 works out from the Rs 578 per month per capita expenditure Planning Commission considers ample for a city dweller to survive on. This, as per their report, includes Rs 31 a month on rent and conveyance, Rs 18 a month on education, Rs 25 a month on medicines and Rs 36.5 a month on vegetables. Anyone spending a paisa more than this is officially not poor. The three would have been well aware that their presence at the protest would mark a public declaration that they were not backing off from the confrontation with the Prime Minister's Office and the Plan panel, the latter being as determined that food subsidies have to be kept low despite the food security bill. Earlier the apex court too had suggested to the government to relook at whether spending Rs 20 kept people well fed and above the poverty line. When the protestors gathered at Yojna Bhawan they were whisked away by the police and later released. The Plan panel members refused to meet them but later in the evening the deputy chairman met 15 of them which included Jean Dreze. Montek got his packet of goodies. The gathering handed over the Rs 20 packets -- including combs, a little dal, some rice grains, a band aid, and other essentials -- for his colleagues as well. But he stuck to his position, said one of the protestors who got to meet Singh. He instead suggested they meet Kaushik Basu, the chief economic advisor to the finance ministry. Basu has made a strong pitch for dismantling the grain distribution system and shift to cash transfers. The meeting only produced one result – both sides came out sure that the other is not going to budge from its position anytime soon. (TOI, 24/05/2011)

Fudging parameter to reduce number of poor NEW DELHI: How does the government manage to keep the poverty line so low? Rather simple for the statisticians – they simply bring down the key parameter – amount of food one should have to stay alive. Earlier, the Planning Commission stipulated 2,100 kilo calories per day per person in the cities and 2,400 kcalories per day per person was the minimum required to survive. Now consuming 1,800 kcalories per day is enough, according to the Tendulkar report. Is there a reason to reduce the measure? Economists say UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) suggests so. FAO does but, for those living a sedentary lifestyle with little or no physical work. Hardly what one would think is the life of a poor person either in the cities or in rural India, but the Tendulkar committee has used this criteria for the entire poor working population in urban and rural India. Contrary to Tendulkar's reduced calorie intake criteria, the National Institute of Nutrition, in its new report has prescribed 2,320-3,490 kcalories per day per person for good health. The Tendulkar committee had, in fact, stepped away from any nutrition-based poverty line. It instead took the earlier urban poverty line and used it as the basis claiming it was "generally accepted as being less controversial than its rural counterpart". This urban poverty line was based on how much people spent in a month on their necessities and then deciding how much monthly expenditure

would be adequate for nutrition, education and health. Once they had chosen this cut off monthly expenditure they checked to see if it allowed people to get enough food. But here, instead of checking it against the earlier (and higher) norms they instead checked the expenditure against the lower FAO level of 1,800 kcalories per day. They found it adequate. So now, if anyone buys vegetables worth more than Rs 36.5 per month, or cereals worth Rs 96.5 per month or pulses worth Rs 19.2 and milk worth more than Rs 43.6 per month, he or she is not poor anymore. (TOI, 24/05/2011)

Planning Commission's definition of BPL a mockery: CPI(M) The CPI(Marxist) on Thursday described the Planning Commission's definition of BPL as “a mockery and a fraud” and found fault with the UPA government for not being able to deliver on its two-year-old promise of food security legislation. In an editorial in the latest edition of the party organPeople's Democracy, the party referred to the ongoing proceedings on a PIL before the Supreme Court, regarding the Planning Commission's claim that a daily expenditure of Rs. 20 on essential requirements for those living in urban areas and Rs.15 for those in the rural India was enough to keep them out of poverty. “By implication, all others earning more are ruled out of the safety net proposed by the NFSA [National Food Security Act]. This poverty line of Rs. 20 per day for people living in the cities is worked out from the Commission's opinion that anybody with Rs. 578 per month is not to be officially considered as poor. As per its report, this amount includes a monthly expenditure of Rs. 31 on rent and conveyance, Rs.18 on education, Rs. 25 on medicines and Rs. 36.50 on vegetables. A mockery! A fraud! In fact, both,” the editorial said. It said the ridiculousness of these figures could be gauged from the fact that the Commission itself prescribed a minimum intake of 2,400 calories daily to sustain oneself. This required an expenditure of at least Rs. 44 per day — not including any expenditure on shelter, clothing, education, and transportation. The Commission put the poverty ratio at 33 per cent of our population while the National Advisory Council suggested 46 per cent. Both estimations, however, are “woefully short”. (Hindu, 27/05/2011)

India's 68 pc people may get legal right to subsidi sed food India's 68 per cent population may get legal right to subsidised food if the draft National Food Security bill prepared by the Food Ministry is approved by a panel of ministers at the forthcoming meeting. After analysing the recommendations of the National Advisory Committee (NAC) and Rangarajan Committee, the Food Ministry has prepared a draft bill, likely to be placed before the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on food next week. The ministry has also proposed to provide subsidised food grain on 'individual basis' instead of the current practice of allocating 35 kg of wheat or rice to per family, according to sources. "The draft bill of the Food Ministry seeks to provide a legal right on subsidised food on 'individual basis' to about 68 per cent of India's population," a source said. The ministry's proposal is lower than the Sonia Gandhi led NAC's suggestion that 75 per cent of population should be covered. India's population is over 1.2 billion. Last week, Food Minister K V Thomas had said that the draft bill was ready and would cover both the priority and general category under the proposed law as suggested by NAC. The Rangarajan Committee had recommended that legal cover should not be given to 'general' category due to constraints of foodgrains stocks. Sources explained that a legal right to an "individual" family member would enlarge the scope of food security in the country.In effect, it means that each individual will possess a ration card and will be entitled to a minimum 7 kg of foodgrains under the law as against the prevailing system, wherein, the head of the family has a ration card. A priority household is likely to get entitlement over 35kg rice/wheat under the law , while a general category may be for only 10-15 kg, which is lower than the NAC's proposal of 20 kg, sources said. The cost of subsidising foodgrain under the proposed law is expected to touch Rs 1,00,000 annually, as against the current Rs 80,000 crore, sources added.The government had promised in 2009 that it would ensure food security in the country by bringing a legislation. At present, the government supplies 35 kg of rice/wheat to 6.52 crore Below Poverty Line families and at least 15 kg of foodgrains to 11.5 crore Above Poverty Line families (Deccan Herald, 30/05/2011)

Number of hungry in India rose by 65 million betwee n 1990-2005: Oxfam The number of hungry people in India has increased by 65 million -- more than the population of France --because economic development excluded the rural poor, and welfare programmes failed to reach them, according to charity organisation Oxfam. In a report titled 'Growing a better future', it said today that India's economy doubled in size from 1990 to 2005, but the number of hungry in the country had risen by 65 million during the period. Oxfam also warned that average prices of staple crops will more than double

in 20 years if urgent action is not taken to change the international food system, which is already failing to feed nearly a billion people a day. Oxfam research forecasts that average international prices of key staples, such as maize, will increase by between 120 and 180 per cent by 2030, with up to half of this increase due to climate change. The world's poorest people, who spend up to 80 per cent of their income on food, will be hit hardest. An Oxfam release says that decades of steady progress in the fight against hunger is now being allegedly reversed as demand outpaces food production. Depleting natural resources, a scramble for fertile land and water, and the gathering pace of climate change is already making the situation worse, it adds. Oxfam warns that by 2050 demand for food will rise by 70 per cent yet our capacity to increase production is declining. The average growth rate in agricultural yields has almost halved since 1990 and is set to decline to a fraction of one per cent in the next decade. Oxfam Chief Executive Barbara Stocking said, "We are sleepwalking towards an avoidable age of crisis. One in seven people on the planet go hungry every day despite the fact that the world is capable of feeding everyone. "The food system must be overhauled if we are to overcome the increasingly pressing challenges of climate change, spiralling food prices and the scarcity of land, water and energy. We must consign hunger to history." Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, "Many governments and companies will be resistant to change through habit, ideology or the pursuit of profit. It is up to us - you and me - to persuade them by choosing food that's produced fairly and sustainably, by cutting our carbon footprints and by joining with Oxfam and others to demand change." Former President Lula of Brazil said: "We can’t wait anymore. Political leaders and global companies must act now to ensure that all people can put food on their table. There are no excuses. We have the capacity to feed everyone on the planet now and in the future. "If the political will is there, no one will be denied their fundamental human right to be free from hunger." (Deccan herald, 01/06/2011)

Poor may get legal right to subsidised food The National Advisory Council (NAC) led by Congress president Sonia Gandhi has come out with a draft of the proposed Food Security Bill—a landmark legislative initiative, which the ruling party is likely to rely on to sail through the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Bill seeks at least seven kg of grain per person per monthThe NAC—the Congress-led UPA government’s interface with civil society—on Friday posted on its website the draft Food Security bill, seeking comments from the public by June 12. The draft was prepared by the NAC’s Working Group on Food Security on the basis of the framework note that the advisory panel cleared earlier after months of public consultations. The proposed legislation seeks to give a legal entitlement to food grains to all at a subsidised rate. The NAC made public its draft bill on a day the Congress chief launched the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRHM)—a new version of the Swarnajayanti Grameen Swarojgar Yojana—in Rajasthan. After launching the NRHM, Sonia Gandhi said the government was giving final shape to the bill, which would be “a great step forward in fulfilling” the UPA government’s “pledge to end hunger and malnutrition”. In the draft bill, the NAC retained its maximal approach and brushed aside the minimal recommendations of the expert committee headed by C Rangarajan. The committee had suggested that the Food Security bill should legally guarantee supply of food grains at subsidised prices only to the “really needy households”, while the rest should be covered by “an executive order with a varying quantum depending on the availability of food grains”. The committee had suggested that the legally entitled population might be defined as the people below the official poverty line plus 10 per cent of their total number. It had also recommended that the “general category” population should get food grains only at an issue price equal to Minimum Support Price. The NAC, however, remained firm on its stand that the bill should ensure legal entitlement to subsidised food grains for all. Dividing the beneficiaries in two categories, the NAC’s draft bill sought at least seven kilograms of grain per person per month for the priority households at a price not exceeding Re 1 a kg for millets, Rs 2 for wheat and Rs 3 for rice. It also sought to legally entitle general households to at least four kilograms of grain per person per month at a price not exceeding 50 per cent of the MSP of paddy, wheat and millet. (Deccan Herald, 06/06/2011)

Madurai chosen for rural pension scheme Madurai has been chosen as one among eight districts in the country by National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) for implementing a micro pension project for the rural poor. As part of the launch preparations, a stakeholders' workshop was held here on Monday. Representatives of State Bank of India (SBI), Indian Bank, Canara Bank, Indian Overseas Bank (IOB), Tamilnad Merchantile Bank (TMB), Union Bank of India (UBI), Pandyan Grama Bank and Madurai District Co-operative Bank, besides

Farmers Clubs, self-help groups and non-governmental organisations took part in it. R. Shankar Narayan, Assistant General Manager, NABARD, said that Madurai was one among the two districts chosen in South India for this project with Cuddalore being the other one. At least 5,000 beneficiaries would be identified in the district. “A majority of the working poor and low-income women workers in rural India are excluded from formal pension schemes. This segment is vulnerable to old age poverty as barely 5 per cent of it has saving habit. This scheme aims to focus on this segment,” he said. Banks and NGOs should enter into a synergetic partnership to ensure the benefits reach the hitherto unreached segments. The services of Business Correspondents appointed by various banks should be utilised to maximise enrolment. He added that the poor definitely deserved the safety basket of pension which would presuppose regular payment of premium over a long period of time. It was better to enrol into micro pension at a young age so that reasonable monthly returns could be enjoyed. S.K. Kale, General Manager, NABARD, Mumbai, said that ‘financial inclusion' did not mean just opening ‘no frills account' but extending other facilities such as obtaining remittances, getting loans and coverage under rural insurance in addition to getting a safety basket in the form of rural pension. (Hindu, 08/06/2011)

Pension age limit lowered to 60 The Union government on Thursday lowered the age limit for the Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme (IGNOAP) from 65 to 60 years, and increased pension for those above 80 from Rs. 200 to Rs. 500 a month. Both decisions will have retrospective effect from April 1, 2011. The lowering of age will benefit an additional 72.32 lakh people in the age group 60-64, entailing an additional burden of Rs. 1,736 crore on the exchequer. At present, 1.69 crore people above 65 years and living below the poverty line are receiving assistance under the IGNOAP. The cost of enhanced pension for 26.49 lakh people above the age of 80 will be Rs. 953 crore. Thus the annual additional burden of the two decisions will be Rs. 2,770 crore, including three per cent administrative expenses. Consequent to these modifications, the eligibility criteria under the Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme and the Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension Scheme will stand revised from 40-64 to 40-59 years and from 18-64 to 18-59 respectively. (Hindu, 10/06/2011)

Rapped by SC, plan panel to raise BPL bar After being taken to task by the Supreme Court (SC) for adopting highly ‘conservative’ criteria to define below poverty line (BPL), the Planning Commission is considering an upward revision of the BPL bar. According to a senior plan panel official, while the panel will stick to SD Tendulkar’s methodology for inclusion and exclusion of people from the BPL category, it is likely to raise the consumption expenditure bar — the criterion to define BPL. The officials told The Pioneer that people spending less than Rs 50 per head per day in rural areas and Rs 150 per head per day in urban areas will be listed under the BPL category. This is an increase of Rs 35 for a rural person and Rs 130 for an urban one. The revised bar has been proposed taking into account the rising prices. Last year, the plan panel had agreed to cap the BPL number on the basis of the Tendulkar Committee suggestions. It would be applicable from next year. According to the Tendulkar Committee, the poverty line for urban areas is fixed at a consumption expenditure of Rs 579 per capita per month, and for rural areas at Rs 447 per capita per month at 2004-05 prices. This is Rs 20 per day per head for urban and Rs 15 for rural. In 2012, the country will have a new BPL census, which is conducted every five years to identify poor households eligible for benefits under various social welfare programmes such as the TPDS, Indira Awaas Yojana, Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana and Total Sanitation Campaign. The plan panel estimates the number of poor in the country on the basis of consumption expenditure data given by National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). The Rural Development Ministry carries out BPL census on the basis of socio-economic factors and identifies the poor for eligibility under various social sector schemes. At present, BPL numbers stand at 37.2 per cent of the total population on the basis of the 1993-94 consumption expenditure figure, which would not be relevant in the present context taking into account the astronomical rise in commodity prices. Recently, the SC rapped the plan panel on adopting conservative criteria for the BPL cap and sought a comprehensive response on how 1991 Census figures could be treated as a basis for arriving at the population of poor in the country. The court was hearing a PIL filed by the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) to monitor proper implementation of the PDS. Later, in an affidavit filed before the SC, the plan panel stated that it was in the process of drawing up fresh poverty estimates based on NSSO expenditure figures for the year 2009-10. If the plan panel revises the poverty line bar, the BPL number may go very high. But Government officials beg to differ. They count on the fact that since the income has

also gone up over the years, the number of BPL people would remain around the same — 37.2 per cent of the total population. Many States, social activists and NGO have slammed the plan panel for the present ‘conservative’ criteria for categorisation of BPL. During the PIL hearing, the SC pointed to the panel that even the Congress-ruled States have said that the BPL population is grossly understated. The issue acquired urgency in the backdrop of the hue and cry over several thousands tonnes of grain rotting in open across the country. The Centre allocates funds for various social welfare schemes for poor on basis of the BPL number given by the plan panel. The Centre doesn’t go by the Rural Development Ministry’s BPL number or the States’ number, which is generally higher than the plan panel’s BPL number. Rest of the funding is met by the State Governments. Social activists and States argue that plan panel’s conservative number is guided by fiscal prudence. (Pioneer, 10/06/2011)

Brinda: why exclude the disabled from BPL? Brinda Karat, Rajya Sabha member and Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau member, has protested against non-inclusion of disabled persons in the automatic inclusion category for the 2011 below the poverty line (BPL) census being conducted by the Rural Development Ministry. In a letter to Rural Development Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, she has drawn attention to the May 2, 2003 Supreme Court order, in which the disabled have been listed in the automatic inclusion category for Antodaya benefits which means the “poorest of the poor.” Instead of implementing the court order, the BPL census questionnaire has a one-point reference to the disabled and is framed in such a way as to ensure that families with a disabled member do not get a score. “The question is whether it is a household with any disabled member and no able-bodied adult member? It is wrong to link the entitlements of a disabled child or adult with [the question] whether there is an able-bodied member in the household or not.” In most cases there would certainly be an able-bodied member, the most obvious being the mother, she has pointed out. In most of rural India disabled persons are entirely dependent on their families which will have to incur an additional expenditure for their well-being. “It is cruel and unjust, therefore, to deny them the BPL cards. In fact, disabled persons and the family they live with should be automatically included in the BPL category on the understanding that those middle class families who do not require it will exclude themselves.” Ms. Karat has said. In fact, most of the questions are an affront to the large majority who are comprised of the working poor, she says. Although the census design has been simplified compared to 2002, it still retains the ranking system for the majority of the rural population through seven questions on a scale of 0-7, where 7 represents the most poor. The Planning Commission has given each State a “quota” or “cap” on the numbers of those who are to be officially recognised as being eligible for the BPL cards. The ranking system is basically to enable the State governments to fix a cut-off in counting the poor to fit into these highly dubious “caps.” It depends not on whether a particular family is poor or not but on whether there are families which are worse off, in which case the “less poor” family will not be counted as poor. An easily verifiable small automatic exclusion category with the rest of the population recognised as being eligible for entitlements would be far more just, says Ms. Karat. (The Hindu, 15/06/2011)

State government dilutes mandatory age bar With an aim to bring more and more BPL families under the umbrella of pension scheme, the state government further diluted the mandatory age bar saying now whosoever lives in the thatched-roof house is entitled for the benefit. The earlier orders have specified that this benefit would accrue to only those below poverty line families whose head of family is minimum 45 years of age. "The state government has decided to do away with this mandatory age bar. Now, anyone who lives under the thatched roof is entitled for this benefit," Social Welfare Minister Indrajit Saroj said here on Wednesday. It is second time the state government has diluted clause in this highly ambitious flagship scheme of the Government. Earlier, whosoever lived in thatched-roof house was entitled for the benefits of this scheme. The only bar was the age. The pension scheme of the state government, called Uttar Pradesh Mukhya Mantri Aarthik Madad Yojana was launched with much fanfare on November 1, 2010. The beneficiaries of this scheme are all below poverty line with only rider that they should not enjoy the benefits given by governments -state and the central. The beneficiaries get a pension of Rs 400 per month which is paid on half-yearly basis. The cheque is drawn in the name of the women head of the family. Government claims that this scheme would benefit 31 lakh families or 1.5 crore members. The list of beneficiaries was prepared by the gram sabha and was approved only after it got clearance in an open gram sabha meeting. He said directives regarding this has been sent to the District Magistrates and have been asked to open the bank accounts of all the beneficiaries by June 30. "Government has received complaints that banks do not

open accounts of those heads of the family who are mentally deranged. In that case the account should be opened jointly with an able member of the family, preferably a woman," the minister said. (Pioneer, 16/06/2011)

NAC to finalise Food Security Bill draft today The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) hopes to finalise its Working Group's draft of the Food Security Bill, take the discussion on its Communal Violence (CV) Bill draft further and hold a discussion on the plight of Jarawas in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, when it meets here on Wednesday, sources in the Council told The Hindu. The final version of the Food Security Bill draft, already vetted for legal infirmities by Additional Solicitor-General Indira Jaisingh, will be presented by Harsh Mander and the NAC is expected to clear it on Wednesday, the sources said. The CV Bill, on the other hand, is still at a discussion stage: Farah Naqvi will present the feedback the NAC received. The sources said that while many suggestions made by other civil society groups could be taken on board to sharpen the CV Bill, the key issue that would be debated on Wednesday was on whether the word “minority” should be used at all in the Bill. Objections to the use of the word “minority” have come in largely from the Bharatiya Janata Party and other right-wing groups. But many in the ruling dispensation also appear to be queasy about its use. They feel that dropping the word, while leaving the phrase “targeted violence,” will make it easier to get the Bill through Parliament. However, an influential section in the NAC — which is in favour of retaining the word — point to the institutional bias against minorities and cite the example of the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribes Atrocity Act. Simultaneously, senior Tribal Affairs Ministry officials will brief the NAC on the recent visit of Union Minister for Tribal Affairs Kantilal Bhuria and senior officials to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to get a firsthand feel of the plight of Jarawas, an endangered group of tribals, and the report that emerged from the visit. This is a subject in which Ms. Gandhi has evinced deep interest since NAC 1, when she had set up a special Sub-Group, in which current Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and Planning Commission member Syeda Hameed were members. Earlier, in the year, the NAC had despatched an official to the islands to check whether tourism practices were upsetting the life of the Jarawas. The debate, the sources said, revolved around whether the Jarawas should continue to exist in their pristine habitat, cut off from the mainstream, or whether they should be “empowered” through interventions, especially relating to health and education. Meanwhile, while the NAC had placed its Food Security Bill draft on its website, setting a deadline of June 12 for all responses to come in, before the NAC puts its finishing touches on the Bill prior to despatching it to government, Union Food Minister K.V. Thomas has publicly said he had prepared the Food Security Bill, and even called a conference of Chief Ministers to seek their views and cooperation to implement the Bill. The Food Ministry's draft — or what has appeared in the public domain — appears to be largely inspired the NAC's WG draft, but it is not clear what the government will now do with the final NAC draft. Of course, Professor Thomas has also had two meetings with the NAC. (Hindu, 22/06/2011)

NAC clears drafts of Food Security, Communal Violen ce Bills At the end of its first year, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) on Wednesday cleared the drafts of two landmark laws — one that promises food security to 90 per cent of rural households and 50 per cent of urban households, and the other that will ensure justice for minorities of all categories when they become victims of targeted, mass violence. The two drafts will now be sent to the government. The Communal Violence (CV) Bill generated a lengthy debate on whether the group definition of minorities should remain in the draft — and the verdict was in the affirmative. “While everybody felt that the intellectually and morally correct position was to centre the bill on the minorities because of the institutional bias against them,” sources in the Council told The Hindu, “some members pointed out that it was a politically volatile issue, and retaining the word may make it difficult to get it past the political right in Parliament.” But in the end, the sources said, Ms. Gandhi herself said it was the right thing to do — so the word minorities stays, even though the NAC anticipates a big battle ahead. Farah Naqvi, who headed the Working Group (WG) on the CV Bill, apprised the NAC of the suggestions received from citizens, citizen groups and government, and the end of the discussion, the NAC agreed to 49 amendments based on the feedback, even while endorsing the principal features of the original draft. Most of the amendments emanate from the critique by civil society groups (some of whose members were originally on the drafting and advisory committees of the NAC's WG) of the draft that was posted on the NAC website. Topping this list is the decision to delete a clause, which refers to Article 355 of the Constitution, as this mistakenly created a fear that it may interfere with the federal structure. Two, the definition of communal and

targeted violence had included a reference to ‘destruction of the secular fabric' — it was agreed that this was too high a threshold, and, therefore, this phrase will be deleted. Concerns about excessive powers to the National Authority have also been addressed. Food Bill legally vetted The draft Food Security bill, prepared by the Harsh Mander-headed WG, has been legally vetted by Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaising. The NAC has not changed any of the WG recommendations: an innovative element in it is its recommendation to have independent grievance redress officers at the district level to be recruited by the Union Public Service Commission, who could be from the corporate sector, the media and academia and those who could be a counterpoint to the Collector of the district. Lest they develop vested interests, it would only be for five years. At the Centre and in the States, there will be appellate authorities, the National and State Commissions — and in case, there is a grievance that cannot be sorted out at the State-level, it will come to the National Commission: the States might find this tough to accept, but the Council sources said the key to the success of the food security project would be enforcing a system of accountability. Members who attended Wednesday's meeting included Narendra Jadhav, Pramod Tandon, Aruna Roy, Madhav Gadgil, N.C. Saxena, A.K. Shiva Kumar, Deep Joshi, Anu Agha, Ms. Naqvi, Mr. Mander and Mirai Chatterjee. (Hindu, 23/06/2011)

'Gujarat issuing BPL cards to non-beneficiaries' GANDHINAGAR: The World Bank has taken strong exception to a handful of states, including Gujarat, for deliberately issuing below poverty line (BPL) cards to non-beneficiaries, who are not part of the official poverty line list. Finding mention in "Social Protection for a Changing India", a two volume report, prepared at the request of the Government of India, the World Bank has singled out Gujarat as one of the four states – others being Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Orissa – which have "BPL card beneficiaries which far exceed official poverty estimates." In fact, the World Bank specifically mentions how in Gujarat, along with the other states, "the percent of BPL cardholders are three times more than the official poverty rate." The result is, "in these states, de facto under-coverage rates (of BPL card holders) are lower than de jure"; there are a large number of non-poor who have BPL cards; and there is a "very high leakage rate" in the distribution of essential commodities to the poor. The World Bank report estimates Gujarat's rural poverty rate at 18.8 per cent, but says, 38.3 per cent of the rural population are BPL cardholders. The discrepancy is not as high in most states. In Haryana, the rural poverty rate is 13.3 per cent and rural BPL cardholders are 18.6 per cent. The respective figures for Maharashtra are 29.6 per cent and 34.1 per cent; Punjab 9 per cent and 11.7 per cent; Rajasthan 18.3 per cent and 17.9 per cent; Madhya Pradesh 36.9 per cent and 35.4 per cent; and West Bengal 28.4 per cent and 30.2 per cent. The discrepancy has hit the poorest the most. No doubt, 42.3 per cent of the poorest of the poor in Gujarat exclusively depend on the public distribution system ( PDS) for grain off-take, which I much higher than the national average (35.6 per cent). But the World Bank believes that the poor would have gained even more in case the discrepancy was not there. It comments, "Targeted programmes have naturally to concern themselves with identifying who are the poor, and how well interventions reach them. Given fiscal constraints, they also often need to ensure that the non-poor do not benefit unduly from interventions which are intended to be targeted." Not without reason, the World Bank has estimates that the government's per capita expenditure towards five major anti-poverty programmes in Gujarat has been much lower than the national average. It is Rs 7,763 per year in Gujarat as against Rs 9,066 all-India. This is much below several states, including Andhra Pradesh (Rs 21,824), Assam (Rs 24,218), Chhattisgarh (Rs 10,761), Himachal Pradesh (Rs 27,565), Kerala (Rs 13,303), Karnataka (Rs 14,899), Rajasthan (Rs 11,357), Tamil Nadu (Rs 14,915), and so on. (TOI, 29/06/2011)

Dalit farmer ends life in penury Amidst much political heat over land acquisition by UP government and Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi pushing the present regime to the wall by undertaking a three -day ‘padyatra’ from Bhatta-Parsaul in Noida on Tuesday morning, the state government was in for more embarrassment when a Dalit farmer ended his life due to penury in Sitapur. The reason for the man taking the extreme step is said to be mounting pressure from a bank over repayment of a loan taken against his land and abject penury. Ironically, the local police preferred to hush up the matter claiming it to be a simple case of suicide. As per reports, Vinod Kumar Pasi (38) of Changpurwa hamlet in Thangaon, Sitapur, was found hanging from a mango tree in an orchard on Monday evening. The preliminary probe revealed that the

deceased, who had two sons and two daughters, was facing abject penury. It also transpired that Vinod Kumar had taken a loan of `12,000 from Regional Rural Bank three years ago. For this, he had to mortgage four bighas of his agriculture land. But the cash he had taken for farming, was incidentally spent on the treatment of his wife. Driven by poverty, Vinod started taking food grains on credit from local shop-keepers. But after sometime, the local traders stopped the supplies due to non-payment of dues. Besides, the bank too served several notices on Vinod asking him to repay the money immediately failing which his land would be auctioned. Depressed with the developments, Vinod Kumar reportedly left his house on Monday morning and ended his life. The police, after the autopsy, claimed that the victim had taken the extreme step due to family problems and not due to poverty or starvation. Meanwhile, in Jaunpur, another person tried to immolate himself before senior officials on Tuesday morning. As per reports, Shafiq of Utwam locality of Nivadiya police circle was trying to get a house under Indira Awas Yojna. But when he refused to pay gratification to the officials concerned, he could not get an allotment letter. After this, Shafiq met several senior officials but to no avail. On Tuesday also, he went to attend the ‘Tehsil Diwas’ and demanded that he be allotted a house. But when the officials expressed their inability, he doused himself with kerosene and tried to set himself ablaze. Fortunately, some cops rescued him and later arrested him. A case was registered in this regard and he was sent to jail. (Pioneer, 06/07/2011)

$1 b. World Bank credit for rural livelihood missio n The World Bank has approved $1 billion as credit for the recently reframed National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), a Centrally-launched programme that seeks to improve livelihood prospects in the country's rural economy. The World Bank intends to support specific additional investments in 12 States, which have a high number of poor people. Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have the highest number of absolute poor and account for almost 85 per cent of India's rural poor, according to the World Bank. The organisation stressed that its project would help the NRLM scale up the successes of past initiatives to other lagging regions of the country. The World Bank has supported other such projects in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, and has mobilised some 35 million rural poor since 2000. The World Bank claimed that its projects had so far resulted in household savings in excess of $1 billion and that self-help groups had leveraged credit worth nearly $7.5 billion from commercial banks, and had achieved an annual turnover of $500 million through the collective marketing of farm and non-farm produce. Robert Zagha, World Bank Country director for India, expressed confidence that rural India would continue to play a significant role in the coming decades and that programmes such as these would help shape the country's human capital, which resides in its villages, for the future. The World Bank will specifically support the formation of institutions such as SHGs, federations at the village, cluster, block and district levels; promote thrift-based groups and financial discipline; invest in financial literacy and business planning as a core activity for SHGs and help them address livelihood needs, including consumption purposes such as health emergency or child education and income generating activities such as purchase of livestock and seeds. Venu Rajamony, joint secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, said the success of the NRLM would serve as a backbone for pulling all other poverty reduction efforts under one umbrella and help the country move closer to some of the key millennium development goals for nutrition, gender and poverty. (Hindu, 07/07/2011)

India contributes to large drop in global poverty: UN report UNITED NATIONS: India has contributed to a large reduction in global poverty, according to the UN annual report on the Millennium Development Goals which also pointed out that despite progress, the most vulnerable sections of society were being left out. The report, which was released on Thursday , said that poverty continues to decline in many countries and regions. It said that the fastest and sharpest reductions in poverty were in Eastern Asia particularly in China where the poverty rate is expected to fall under 5 per cent by 2015. "India has also contributed to the large reduction in global poverty," the report said. "In that country, poverty rates are projected to fall from 51 per cent in 1990 to about 22 per cent in 2015." The report said that in China and India combined, the number of people living in extreme poverty between 1990 and 2005 declined by about 455 million, and an additional 320 million people are expected to join their ranks by 2015. The report examines where the world stands in terms of achieving the eight social and economic targets by 2015. The goals include eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, and ensuring environmental sustainability. The report also said that despite

significant setbacks after the 2008-2009 economic crisis, the world is still on track to reach the poverty-reduction target. By 2015, it is now expected that the global poverty rate will fall below 15 per cent, well under the 23 per cent target. The report pointed out that despite progress, the most vulnerable sections of society were being left out. For instance, the poorest children have made the least progress towards improved nutrition. On the health front, it said that the prevalence of tuberculosis was declining. Between 1995 and 2009, a total of 41 million tuberculosis patients were successfully treated and up to 6 million lives were saved due to effective international protocols for the treatment of tuberculosis. However, India had one of the highest number of tuberculosis cases along with China, South Africa, Nigeria and Indonesia. China and India combined accounted for 35 per cent of the world's new tuberculosis cases. In environmental sustainability, the report said that forests are rapidly disappearing in South America while Asia led by China is experiencing net gains, the report said. Asia had registered a net gain of 2.2 million hectares annually in the past 10 years, mostly because of large afforestation programme in China, India and Vietnam. (Economic Times, 08/07/2011)

Pranab-led EGoM clears crucial Food Security Bill The Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on Food on Monday cleared the crucial Food Security Bill, which seeks to entitle 75 per cent of the BPL (below poverty line) population and 50 per cent of the urban population to heavily subsidised food grains. It also lifted the ban on export of non-basmati rice. The EGoM, chaired by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, paved the way for the Law Ministry to frame the Bill, which the government aims to introduce during the monsoon session of Parliament. The decision entitles 68 per cent of the country's population to food security. The Centre intends to take the Chief Ministers into confidence on the issue as the States would be pivotal to the implementation of the measures. A conference of Chief Ministers is likely to be held in this regard. Each beneficiary under the BPL (now referred to as priority sector) will be given 7 kg of food grains — rice will be provided at Rs. 3 a kg and wheat at Rs. 2. As for the general category (above poverty line), each identified beneficiary will be given 3-4 kg at half the minimum support price at which the government procures rice and wheat from farmers. The government estimates the additional subsidy burden at Rs. 13,000 crore, taking its total subsidy bill on food to about Rs. 95,000 crore. Lifting the ban on export of non-basmati rice, the EGoM allowed export of one million tonnes of staple rice in view of record production and overflowing godowns. It, however, deferred a decision on opening the doors for export of wheat, though the proposal was to allow sale of two million tonnes in the international market. (Hindu, 12/07/2011)

“Making quality education cheaper will alleviate po verty” Making education cheaper and improving the standards in public schools will help in alleviating poverty, said Jatindranath Swain, Secretary, Food, Cooperation and Consumer Protection Department, here on Tuesday. Speaking at a seminar ‘Beyond SHGs,' organised by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) as part of the Foundation Day celebrations, Mr. Swain said both the Central and State governments introduced several poverty alleviation programmes. But, not all of them have achieved great success. Launching of self-help group (SHG) programme had taught the rural poor on how to handle small capital. However, due to lack of non-availability of quality education at affordable prices, the sizeable portion of the earnings of SHG members were spent on educating their wards in private schools, he pointed out. Public education system was totally neglected due to which even the rural poor had to opt for expensive convent education. The State Government had to look into the issue, he said. Seeing the successful functioning of the SHGs, some of the political parties have started exploiting them. Something had to be done to address this issue, he pointed out. The SHG movement had to be strengthened by giving newer ideas to it. Sharing her experience N. Lalitha, Professor and Head, Gandhigram Rural University, said the SHG movement had grown in the past two decades. Members of the SHGs used the revenue for buying consumer goods, including gold. This issue had to be addressed seriously, she said. Structurally the SHGs needed to be upgraded and better training had to be provided to them, she added. NABARD was instrumental for creating the link between the banks and the SHGs, said Selvam Veeraraghavan, General Manager, Indian Bank. The NABARD is the guardian of the SHG movement he said adding that it had also provided training for partnership institutions. Lalitha Venkatesan, Officer-in-charge, NABARD Regional Office, Chennai and Malabika Deo, Professor and Head, Pondicherry University, were among those who spoke on the occasion. (Hindu, 13/07/2011)

“Pre-determined BPL ceiling will hamper poverty all eviation efforts”

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday sought Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's intervention in rolling back the Rural Development Ministry's decision to use Below Poverty Line estimates based on the Suresh Tendulkar committee report “as a pre-determined ceiling” while conducting the 2011 Socio-Economic and Caste Census. The issue of the number of BPL families in Bihar has always been a contentious one, with the State government's researches pegging the figure at 1.4 crore families and Central estimates classifying only 65 lakh families as fulfilling the below-poverty line norms. In a letter to Dr. Singh, Mr. Kumar cautioned that a pre-determined BPL ceiling that “did not correspond to ground realities would seriously hamper the State government's efforts to deal with poverty alleviation issues effectively.” He also raised the spectre of a law and order problem in cases where the government would be unable to justify why certain people were left out of the BPL category norms just because of a cap. “We are aware that some State governments may inflate numbers to attract Central grants, but an arbitrary cap is not an answer to this problem,” Mr. Kumar noted in the letter. The Chief Minister has in the past stressed need for the Centre to shoulder the responsibility of identifying the number of BPL families in the country. He reiterated the State's government's request to constitute an independent BPL commission on the lines of the Election Commission to identify BPL families. Mr. Kumar suggested that such a commission would “not be subjected to the pulls and pressures of daily administration” and would be endowed with “specialised knowledge and experience,” which was currently missing in the Ministry of Rural Development and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation. (Hindu, 13/07/2011)

Jairam Ramesh to review job scheme, to complete pov erty census (21) As the new rural development minister, Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday said a review of the achievements of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and completion of the census of families living below the poverty line would be among his key priorities. "The BPL census was last held in 2002. We hope to complete it by the end of the year," Ramesh said a day after he was sworn in as rural development minister. "We will also review the NREGA. We need to find out whether Rs40,000 crore spent on it has benefited the people," he added. In a cabinet reshuffle Tuesday, Ramesh was moved from the environment ministry to the rural development ministry. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Ramesh's talents will be better utilised in the new portfolio. (DNA 13/7/11)

Tribals starving in Alirajpur due to wrong categori zation (21) Tribals of about 15 villages of Alirajpur district displaced by the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) are facing starvation due to wrong categorisation under the Public Distribution System (PDS) in Madhya Pradesh. Following a fact-finding visit to the region, the State advisor to the Supreme Court commissioners in the Right to Food (RTF) case, has written to authorities including Chief Secretary Avni Vaish about the plight of “hundreds of adivasis” who are facing the double brunt of displacement and starvation as they have been categorised as living Above the Poverty Line (APL). The RTF team visited two villages — Anjanwaara ad Bhitada — and found that adivasis were unable to purchase grain from the PDS shops as it was available to them only on APL rates. “The Supreme Court Commissioners had directed the Chief Secretary, Government of Madhya Pradesh, way back in 2004 to provide rations free of cost or at Antyodaya rates to all the dalit and adivasi families affected by SSP. Almost 7 years later, this directive is yet to be complied with,” said Sachin Jain, advisor to the Supreme Court Commissioners. People from the region say that the problem could magnify with the onset of monsoons. Also, the incidence of water-borne diseases would further make matters difficult. “The rations are just lying here since people can’t purchase them. Moreover, 7 kgs per month, per family, is too little and just insufficient to meet people’s requirement. People are forced to go upto Kakrana or even cross the river and purchase bajra and jowar from the open market in Maharahstra, since wheat has become very costly,” says Huma Padiyar, the ration shop caretaker at Anjanwaara. Efforts to include these families in the Below Poverty Line (BPL) category are going on but the progress is very slow, people from the region say. “During our visit, the district administration assured us to conduct new surveys to enlist these families into the BPL category and extend the Antyodaya benefit to them. This process, we believe is continuing, but as on date, most families in Anjanwara are starving, unable to purchase rations. I got a commitment from officials in May that the process would be over June but even after two months, these families continue to starve,” says Mr. Jain. (The Hindu 14/7/11)

Grain output whets hunger for more (21)

New Delhi, July 16: India needs a second green revolution to feed its growing population despite producing a record 241 million tonnes of foodgrain in 2010-2011, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said here today. “The inclusive strategies of development we are pursuing should increase the income of the poorer sections of our society. This will increase the demand for not only foodgrain but also fruits, vegetables and animal products. The total demand for foodgrain is projected to touch 280 million tonnes by 2020-21. Meeting this demand will necessitate a growth rate of nearly 2 per cent per annum in food production,” Singh said at an event organised to honour states achieving high foodgrain output in 2010-11. Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Assam and Chhattisgarh were among the winners. The record foodgrain produced during farm year July 2010 to June 2011 was 23 million tonnes more than the year before. However, the demand is set to rise with population growing at nearly 1.8 per cent annually and more people moving out of poverty. Moreover, if India wants to export grain to traditional buyers such Bangladesh and Africa, it will have to push the production even higher. “We clearly need a second green revolution that is more broad-based, more inclusive and more sustainable; we need to produce more without depleting our natural resources any further,” Singh said. The first green revolution focused on the Doab region covering most districts of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. But productivity in these areas has been declining and India needs to replicate its farm success in the east and the south, say scientists and policymakers. India spends about 0.6 per cent of its agricultural GDP on farm research and development. “This needs to be enhanced at least 2-3 times by 2020 since a substantial portion of our agricultural growth will come through the application of new technologies,” Singh said. In order to bridge the gap in agriculture yields, the PM told farm scientists that their main client was the farmer and they must get their research questions primarily from the farmers. Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar said, “The production of fruits, vegetables, milk, meat, fish and eggs has been increasing significantly in recent times. More technological breakthroughs and innovative agriculture development programmes are needed to maintain the current momentum as well as to increase the input use efficiency for sustained increase in production.” The government has decided to lift the over four-year old ban on wheat exports even as shipment of the grain is not viable at current global prices. The government had banned wheat exports since early 2007 to boost domestic supply and contain inflation. “Yes, there is no ban. Wheat exports are allowed,” Pawar said. The government has not announced the quantity of wheat that can be allowed for exports as global prices are very low, Pawar added. (Telegraph 16/7/11)

National food security commission in works (21) New Delhi: The final draft of the proposed food security Bill approved by the finance and food ministries has a provision for creation of a national food security commission for implementation of the mega scheme that aims at providing subsidised grains to close to two-third of the country’s population. The commission, to be headed by a chairperson, member secretary and five other members including civil servants and food experts, will be located in New Delhi. Similar bodies will be set up at the state level also. As reported by FE last week, the Bill has a provision for food security allowance (cash payment) in case of the failure to provide beneficiaries with subsidised grains due to poor monsoon. It also envisages creation and maintenance of scientific and storage facilities at the state, district and block levels for ensuring steady flow of grains under the Targeted Public Distribution System. A copy of the Bill reviewed by FE... (Financial Express 19/7/11)

Food security to cost Centre Rs 3L cr in 2 yrs (21) New Delhi: The implementation of National Food Security Bill will cost the Government a bomb. Food Minister KV Thomas told The Pioneer that the cumulative implementation cost of the scheme would be between `2.5 lakh crore and `3 lakh crore over a period of two years. “We have estimated that annual food subsidies would be `94,987 crore. In addition, the Government will have to invest big money into agriculture to increase productivity, undertake PDS reforms, and improve storage capacity and transportation. Overall, the Government will require `2.5-3 lakh crore over a period of two years for its implementation,” Thomas added. This will be double of this year’s overall subsidy of `1,34,210 crore on food, petroleum and fertilisers. Thomas said that the Bill had been sent to the Law Ministry for vetting. “I have discussed the Bill with the Prime Minister. He has advised me to have a meeting with the States before sending it to the Cabinet. We will introduce the Bill in the Monsoon Session of Parliament and hope to pass it in the Winter Session,” he added. However, Thomas ruled out its implementation any time this year. “It will be introduced in Parliament in the Monsoon Session and then will go to the Standing Committee, which again may take time,” Thomas said, adding that the Government would be able to

implement it from only the next financial year, which is the first year of the 12th Five Year Plan period. The Bill was passed last week by the Empowered Group of Ministers on food (EGoM), headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. Thomas had a meeting with the chief economic adviser to the Prime Minister, C Rangarajan, on Tuesday to discuss the draft Bill. Sources in the Food Ministry said it was keen to pass it before the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election in the first half of 2012. The Bill has been in the news for the last two years due to differences between the Sonia Gandhi-led NAC and the Prime Minister-appointed Rangarajan Committee. NAC had proposed legal entitlements to 90 per cent households in rural areas and 50 per cent in urban areas. It had demanded that priority households (46 per cent in rural areas and 28 per cent in urban areas) should be entitled to 35 kg foodgrains every month. For general households, this should be 20 kg, NAC had demanded. The Rangarajan Committee was in favour of granting legal assurance to the priority households only and said that the general category should be covered through an executive order with a varying quantum depending on the availability of foodgrains. The approved Bill, drafted by the Food Ministry, is a diluted version of the NAC’s draft. The approved Bill gives legal entitlements to 75 per cent of the rural households (46 per cent priority and rest general) and 50 per cent (28 per cent priority and rest general) of the urban households. It agreed on the NAC’s proposal on issue price --- Rs 1 per kg for millets, Rs 2 for wheat and Rs 3 for rice. However, for general households the Bill has deviated from the NAC’s demand. For general category, issue price would be 50 per cent of the MSP rate in case of wheat and 50 per cent of the derived price of rice (paddy MSP plus milling cost). NAC had demanded that for the general category the price should not exceed 50 per cent of the MSP of the three grains. When the scheme is implemented, the Government would have to procure double the amount of foodgrains it procures now. This is expected to change the dynamics of the open market and jack up grain prices since the procurement from open market will go up from current 30 million tonnes to 60 million tonne. (Pioneer 20/7/11)

Food security law could push up world prices, widen subsidy bill (21) The proposed Food Security Act has the potential to stoke global food prices and significantly increase the country's food subsidy bill, officials and experts say. The government plans to introduce a legislation which aims to ensure food security for 75% of the rural households and 50% of the urban areas and includes both below poverty line and above poverty line families. Experts say that in case there is a drought in future and procurement drops below the desired level, the government may have to resort to imports to meet the commitment under the proposed Act and this is bound to trigger a sharp increase in global prices, given the likely scale of the imports. "Historically we have exported at low prices and imported at high prices. The global market keeps a close watch on production around the world and India is not a regular importer or exporter. So whenever India enters the global market, for example as they did in 2008, we had to import at high prices," said Vinod Kapoor, an independent trade expert. Officials say the costs involved for running the scheme could also pose a serious challenge. They say monitoring and implementing the provisions of this gigantic plan would also prove to be a huge obstacle for the government machinery and put a huge strain on the procurement agencies. This year the government has procured record amount of grains but in the past 10 years there have been times when the procurement was below expectation. While the option to mop up grains from the open market is available, it would put a huge strain and lead to market distortions. According to government estimates, the total requirement to implement the plan would be around 61 million tonnes. "In 1972-73 , there was a complete takeover of the wholesale market for grains and had to be reversed within weeks. That danger is there now," a senior official, who did not wish to be identified, told TOI. Then prime minister Indira Gandhi nationalized the wholesale trade in foodgrain but had to reverse the decision after the decision led to market chaos and bumped up prices. Some experts suggest that providing cash compensation should be made an upfront provision in the legislation. Too much emphasis on wheat and rice may also hurt the process of diversification of agriculture, they argue. "Why only wheat and rice. There should be a choice that the household can purchase eggs, maize, etc. This will reduce the burden on wheat and rice," said an official. Another worry which has emerged is the fiscal burden that the move will impose. Officials do not expect any major burden this year as the implementation could take place by around December or January, after the legislation is approved by Parliament . But things would be different from next year. "For the full year the foodsubsidy bill next year could touch Rs 90,000 crore if not Rs 100,000 crore," said another senior official, closely linked to the discussion, who did not wish to be identified. Economists said

while such a programme was desirable, the government would have to restructure its spending to cushion the impact on finances. (Economic Times 25/7/11)

MU to study impact of midday meals on school kids ( 21) MANGALORE: Manipal University will conduct a comprehensive study on the impact of midday meals on school students in Dakshina Kannada, Mysore, Hubli and Bellary districts soon. Addressing at a workshop on midday meals organized by the Akshaya Patra Foundation at zilla panchayat hall here on Saturday, Manipal University public health department head Ramachandra Kamath said the study has already been started in 10 schools in Mangalore, he said, adding that the main objective of conducting study is to ascertain the nutritional and health status of children, who consume midday meals. Delivering the inaugural address, higher education minister V S Acharya said infant mortality rate is very less in coastal districts compared to other districts in the nation. While the infant mortality rate is 7.8 deaths per 1,000 children in other districts, the coastal belt has recorded only 5.6 per 1,000 children, he said and pointed out that the population of Udupi and Dakshina Kannada districts have decreased by 25% and 20% respectively. (Times of India 25/7/11)

Food Security Bill to be tabled in Parliament by De cember (21) Chennai: The much-touted National Food Security Bill aimed at providing foodgrains at subsidised price to the poor may be be introduced in Parliament by December this year said, K V Thomas, Union minister of state for consumer affairs and food. The empowered group of ministers had approved the draft Bill which was now before the law ministry. “Once that is done, it has to go to the Cabinet. We will also discuss with the chief ministers, because they are the implementing agencies”. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a CII seminar he said, “What I propose is to introduce the Bill by this December so that it can be implemented from next year”. With the modernisation of the food storage centres by state governments the Centre is also looking to increasing the country’s annual production of foodgrains from the present 55 million tonne to 60 million tonne.Besides, the ministry was also aiming to increasing the food subsidy from the present R60,000 crore to R1 lakh crore, he said. Earlier delivering a speech at the CII-Institute of Logistics seminar on building warehousing competitiveness-the key to logistics success, he said with a view to providing a much-needed facelift to the warehouses, a slew of diversification of services have been kickstarted on a wide scale aimed at improving the agro-supply chain. The vendor managed inventory (VNI) enabling large and small foothold of distribution centres and newer techniques of building warehouses such as huge distribution centres of over 2 laks sq-ft at optimum cost, were the key projects towards achieving optimisation at the storage places. The government was also into introduction of warehouse management system (WMS) and bar-coding via radio frequency…. (Financial Express 29/7/11)

Number of poor in Mexico climbs by 3.2 mn (21) Mexico City, July 30 : The number of people below the poverty line in Mexico rose by 3.2 million between 2008 and 2010 to 52 million, or 46.2 percent of the country's more than 112 million inhabitants. The increase in poverty had to do mainly with a drop in income and reduced access to food, primarily due to the global recession and spikes in the price of commodities, the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy, or Coneval, executive secretary, Gonzalo Hernandez, said here at a press conference. To reverse that trend, Mexico needs sustained economic growth and structural reforms, he said. The figures are based on Coneval's National Survey of Household Income and Spending. Coneval categorises an individual as poor if he or she suffers deprivations in one or more indicators such as access to health care, food and housing, and earns less than 2,100 pesos ($179) a month in urban areas or less than 1,300 pesos ($111) per month in rural zones. People living in extreme poverty suffer deprivations in three or more indicators and have income of less than 978 pesos ($83.50) a month in urban areas or less than 684 pesos ($58.40) a month in the rural sector. The proportion of Mexicans who are neither poor nor "vulnerable" climbed from 18 percent to 19.3 percent, representing 21.8 million people. The economic crisis "had a significant impact on people's incomes", but those living in urban areas were hit harder, Hernandez said. Indeed, a difference was noted in the income trends of the urban and rural poor, with the poorest 50 percent of urban dwellers seeing their incomes fall by 7.2 percent between 2008 and 2010 while the incomes of the poorest half of the population in rural areas rose by 2.5 percent in the same period. The economic situation of Mexico's roughly 10 million indigenous people

deteriorated, as the proportion of that population living below the poverty line climbed from 75.9 percent to 79.3 percent. (New Kerala 30/7/11)

Rights group slams Food Security Bill draft in lett er to PM (21) New Delhi, Aug 2: Activists of the Right to Food campaign Tuesday wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh slamming the government's draft of the Food Security Bill cleared by the empowered group of ministers (EgoM) and urged it to save the Public Distribution System. "The right to food campaign rejects the EGoM cleared draft of the food security bill and appeals to you to sincerely respond to the needs of hunger and malnutrition of women, children and excluded groups. Help save the PDS (public distribution system) and save the farmers," the campaign members wrote to the prime minister. The members of the campaign include activists Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey, Arundhati Dhuru, and Kavita Srivastava from the People's Union for Civic Liberties (PUCL), among others. The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) finalised its draft of the Bill which seeks to entitle nearly 75 percent of India's population to subsidized foodgrains. The major highlight of the draft Bill is that it 'guarantees subsidized food grain to at least 90 percent of the rural households, and 50 percent of the urban households'. The EgoM recently approved the Department of Food and Consumer Affairs draft of the National Food Security Bill (NFSB) slated to be placed before the cabinet. The letter added: "This draft Bill makes a complete mockery of the idea of food security for all and dilutes even existing entitlements obtained through the Supreme Court." "It was expected that the government will increase investment in the schemes related to food security, in order to reduce the unacceptably high rates of malnutrition and hunger in India. Instead what we get is a draft which minimises government's obligations, restricts people's entitlements and is devoid of any accountability," the activists said in the letter. 'The Bill interprets food security only as distribution of cereals and cooked meals and is completely silent on pulses, millets and oil,' campaign members wrote stressing on the "lack of commitment towards nutritional security or production". "We reject this farce of a Bill and demand that the Government sincerely acts towards alleviating hunger and malnutrition in the country." (New Kerala 2/8/11)

BPL salt does a double take (21) Ranchi, Aug. 3: It’s a move that will unwittingly rub salt on the wounds of around 36 lakh families in Jharkhand living below poverty line. With the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently withdrawing 25 paise coins from circulation, the state government has been forced to shed its friendly face and revise its decision to sell salt at 25 paise per kg to BPL families, commonly known as the lal-card holders. The Arjun Munda cabinet, forced to acknowledge that 25 paise coins had gone the way of the dodo and the dinosaur, yesterday decided to double the rate of salt to 50 paise per kg. “Now that 25 paise coins have been withdrawn, we have decided to sell salt at 50 paise per kg to BPL families,” public distribution minister Mathura Prasad Mahto said today. This decision comes just a month after the cabinet had approved to sell salt at 25 paise per kg. But the decision came a tad late, as the RBI had last month announced that 25 paise coins were numismatically persona non grata. But while the forced inflation may induce some bland rage, the minister also threw in some verbal balm. He said the state had urged the Centre to include 11.44 lakh more BPL families in the main list so that they get lal card benefits. (Telegraph 4/8/11)

Food Safety Act takes effect from today (21) Initiating a new era in food safety, the Food Safety and Standards Act of 2006 will come into force across the country from Friday making it at par with the international standards. It will ensure improved quality of food for the consumers and censure misleading claims and advertisement by those in food business. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), established under the overarching legislation, will lay down science based standards for food items and regulate their manufacture, storage, distribution, sale and import to ensure availability of safe and wholesome food for human consumption. As many as 22 States and Union Territories now have Food Commissioners in place as required under the Act, while seven are expected to do so by the time it is enforced. The Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 which comes into effect five years after it was passed in Parliament, subsumes various central Acts like Prevention of Food Adulteration Act of 1954 , Fruit Products Order of 1955, Meat Food Products Order of 1973, Vegetable Oil Products (Control) Order of 1947, Edible Oils Packaging (Regulation)Order of 1988, Solvent Extracted Oil, De- Oiled Meal and Edible Flour (Control) Order of 1967, Milk and Milk Products

Order of 1992 and also any order issued under the Essential Commodities Act, 1955 relating to food. It will ensure prevention of fraudulent, deceptive or unfair trade practices which may mislead or harm the consumer, and unsafe, contaminated or sub-standard food. Talking to reporters here, V.N. Gaur, Chief Executive Officer of FSSAI, said the Food Safety and Standards Authority will broadly frame regulations to lay down the standards and guidelines for food items and specify an appropriate system of enforcing various standards. It will specify mechanisms for accreditation of certified bodies engaged in certification of food safety management system for food businesses, and procedures for accreditation of laboratories. The FSSAI, set up in 2008, will collect and collate data regarding food consumption, incidence and prevalence of biological risk, residues of various contaminants in foods products, identification of emerging risks and introduction of rapid alert system. The data will help in the implementation of the proposed Food Security Bill and also contribute to the development of international technical standards for food, sanitary and phyto-sanitary standards. While the FSSAI will be based in New Delhi, the states will have a Food Safety Commissioner, and the SDM who will be the designated office at the district level to issue licenses along with the Food Safety Officers (Food Inspectors) who have been trained for their new roles. According to Mr. Gaur, while defining the roles of food business operators and regulator (FSSAI), the Act has provision for compounding offences (except for which punishment is prescribed), adjudication and trials in Appellate Tribunals and special courts, including summary trials. The time limit for prosecutions has also been fixed. The trial has to start within a year from the date of commission of offence. As of now, more than one lakh cases related to food standard offences are pending in various courts across the country. The four major food-testing laboratories have been taken over by the Authority and it is in the process of acquiring two more. But the bigger challenge before the government is to upgrade the 72-odd food testing laboratories at the State level which are woefully inadequate for the modern requirements particularly in the wake of India being a signatory in the WTO. The Authority proposes to grant Rs. 5 crore each for the strengthening of these laboratories under the 12 {+t} {+h} Five Year Plan. (The Hindu 5/8/11)

School girls starving to score size zero: Study (21 ) Mumbai | Agency: DNA: A study conducted by the SVT college has revealed that most of the girls in private schools were obsessed with the size zero figure. But there’s a flip side to the story. According to doctors and nutritionists, young children are developing an unhealthy relationship with food to acquire the size zero figure. Dr Jagmeet Madan, principal investigator of this project and president of the Indian Dietetics Association (Mumbai Chapter), said: “We observed that girls in some private schools were on starvation diet to acquire a size zero figure (Anorexia Nervosa). They have been skipping meals due to misconceptions about foods and the fear of putting on weight. In government schools, there was gross under nutrition due to lack of insight and ignorance about quality eating habits. Teachers and parents were also ignorant about healthy food practice.” According to experts, most girls have got their own slim-figure idols. They feel a slim figure will help them achieve success in the modelling world. Most girls compare themselves to their friends and compete to lose weight faster. This is a global phenomenon. Recently, a study in Britain found nearly half of the girls aged below 14 on a strict diet. Some were even taking slimming pills. Diet and nutrition specialist Rujuta Diwekar said, “I think parents need to address this problem. Mothers put themselves on a diet and girls follow suit. I saw some girls aged between 14 and 16 spend their whole day dieting. They must be taught about good eating habits. It will create awareness among the students.” Dr Yusuf Matcheswala, psychiatrist, Masina hospital, said, “Due to starvation, girls become anorexic. Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterised by refusal to maintain a healthy body weight and an obsessive fear of gaining weight. Such girls may face vitamin D deficiency, menstrual problem and hormonal imbalance.” (DNA 5/8/11)

India needs second green revolution for food securi ty: President (21) Bangalore, Aug 6 : India needs to usher in a second green revolution to meet the challenge of ensuring food security for all, President Pratibha Patil said Saturday. "We need a second green revolution to ensure food security for all and eliminating hunger should be a national responsibility," Patil said delivering the 45th annual convocation address at the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) here. Recalling how the first green revolution made India largely self-sufficient in foodgrains, she said though the country was self-reliant in cereal production, pulses and edible oils were still imported to meet the growing demand-supply gap. "To increase productivity, we need to strengthen institutional support and bridge gaps in support systems, focus on dryland farming, adapt an integrated approach and use

technology as an effective tool in farming," Patil told the graduating students. Noting that agriculture provided employment to about 60 percent of the workforce and nearly 69 percent of the population live in rural areas, she said extensive farming was imperative for the overall development of the people and ensure livelihood. "Though we are a leading IT nation, we should not forget that we are also one of the largest agrarian economies of the world. Hence, agriculture productivity and sustainability needs to be undertaken with a sense of mission," she asserted. Calling upon universities to evolve new scientific methods of crop planning, warehousing and food technologies, the president said agriculture and industry should be developed as two well balanced wheels of the economy. "Agricultural universities should work with the corporate sector to link sowing stage to selling farm produce, including value addition. Institutions providing inputs such as credit, seeds, fertilisers and pesticides must be re-energised to deliver desired outcomes," Patil pointed out. (New Kerala 6/8/11)

States asked to prepare BPL list by March (21) The Union government on Monday asked the States to prepare a below poverty line (BPL) list by March, census for which is now on, so that the needy are readied to enjoy the benefits to be rolled out under the 12th Five Year Plan. Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh hoped the States would prepare the list at the earliest. The Centre would, by December-end, complete its exercise of generating a rank listing of rural households based on the decided exclusion and inclusion criteria. Admitting that there was difference of opinion regarding the criteria fixed by the Centre, Mr. Ramesh categorically stated that both the 13 exclusion and five inclusion criteria were non-negotiable. But he was willing to consider giving additional weightage to some of the seven deprivation indicators, all of which are on an even keel as of now. The Centre was being criticised for allegedly taking artificially low poverty systems while the States were keen to project higher levels of poverty for higher inflow of funds. The States were required to use the Planning Commission's macro estimates of poverty and apply it with the rank list of rural households to be provided by the Centre. In a bid to sort out these differences, an advisory committee under Abhijit Sen was set up. It would meet on August 16 to decide on the robustness of the exclusion and inclusion criteria. Leading sociologists, economists and civil right activists were its members. To ensure proper enumeration, local representatives of the gram panchayat and gram sabha would accompany the census teams and serve as witnesses for greater transparency so as to ensure that the needy got included. In case of any malpractice or misreporting, a summary enquiry would be conducted to avoid the shortcomings of the 2002 BPL census. National Advisory Council member N.C. Saxena demanded that responsibility and accountability be fixed regarding misreporting so as to ensure that the information recorded was authentic and to avoid any error in the application of the exclusion criteria, as it would amount to excluding those who needed to be included in the BPL list. Mr. Ramesh said various institutions would be drawn into the process of making visits to villages and make a study of the enumeration process and point out any glaring errors and bias. The census report would be pasted at the gram sabhas for verification. The Minister also intends to use their services to revisit the practice of conducting concurrent evaluations every quarter, as was done in the 1980s. They will be required to assess programmes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna, the Indira Awas Yojna and the Integrated Watershed Management Programme. (The Hindu 9/8/11)

Urban poverty spike: Govt blames migrants (21) New Delhi: Migration of people from rural areas to towns and cities is one of the reasons why poverty has increased in India's urban areas over the years, Government told the Rajya Sabha today. "Migration of people from rural areas to urban areas is one of the factors in increase of numbers of urban poor," Minister for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Kumari Selja said. Quoting a report of Technical Group on Estimation of Urban Housing Shortage, Selja said the projected housing shortage by year 2012 will be 25.63 million. "As on 2007, the estimated urban housing shortage in the country was 24.71 million. Out of this, the estimated urban housing shortage for the state of Uttar Pradesh was 2.38 million," she said. "Out of the total housing shortage, more than 99 per cent shortage is projected for the EWS and LIG categories of urban households," the Minister said. (Financial Express 10/8/11)

Bihar govt opposes BPL survey pattern (21) PATNA: State government has lodged protest with the Centre over the manner in which survey of people living below poverty line (BPL) would be undertaken next year. Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi

said the state government has lodged protest over the BPL survey on three counts. First, he said, it would be done by an electronic hand device in which the people who would be surveyed would be asked questions in Hindi but the entry would be made in English. BPL people are mostly illiterate, Modi said and mentioned that such people would not be able to understand whether the entries made are correct or concocted. Besides, the survey report would be published in Hindi. Moreover, the poor would be able to have the copy of the answer they gave, as these would be stored in the electronic hand device. He demanded that those on whom the survey was conducted must be given the copy of their answer so that they could tally whether the correct answers were reported or not. (Times of India 10/8/11)

Poor want reformed PDS, not cash transfers (21) New Delhi, Aug 11 : A majority of Delhi's poor prefer a reformed Public Distribution System (PDS) over cash transfers, a survey by NGO Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan (RRAA) said Thursday. The survey was conducted in July in slums and resettlement colonies across Delhi, covering 4,005 households. "We found that about 91.4 percent respondents were strictly against the concept of cash subisidies," said Dipa Sinha, research scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) here. Among the PDS reforms suggested in the survey is the system's universalisation, an idea which 87.4 percent agreed to, states the survey. "Universalisation will ensure distinction between above poverty line (APL) and below poverty line (BPL) families is done away with," Sinha said. "Three quarters of respondents did not want to do away with the PDS because they felt the ration card doubles up as an identity proof, especially in times of death, birth, marriage and employment," said Sehba Farooqui, another member of RRAA. "Secondly they feel that it will take away their food security that the PDS ensures, for the money might be used for other needs," she added. Dharmendra Yadav, another member of the RRAA, added: "It is our demand that the issue be placed in the public domain and not forcefully thrust by the government. "The government must ensure the people a reformed PDS which the people desire. It is not an impossible goal and is merely a matter of political will," he added. (New Kerala 12/8/11)

Food Security Bill to be introduced in Parliament ( 21) New Delhi: Going one step ahead in making one of its most ambitious welfare schemes a reality, the UPA government will table the Food Security Bill the Rajya Sabha on Friday. A brainchild of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC), the National Food Security Bill 2011 aims to make provision of food support to people facing hunger a duty of the state. The legislation promises certain quantity of food grains to Below Poverty Line families. However, there appears to be a major divide between the NAC and the government over various provisions of the Bill, with the advisory body holding the opinion that the government’s version is much diluted. The NAC wanted the bill to guarantee subsidised foodgrains to at least 90 percent of rural households but the government has brought it down to 50 percent, saying that it wants to keep the bill targeted. Also, the NAC had suggested four kilograms of foodgrain per person each month; the government has reduced it to three kilograms. The draft bill follows a life cycle approach and introduces a number of other universal guarantees, including nutrition support and maternity entitlements for pregnant women, nutrition support to children both in pre-school centres and in school, but also to all out of school children; destitute feeding and affordable meals for homeless and other needy urban populations; and special guarantees for starvation and emergencies. It creates also a strong accountability framework for protection of these entitlements and allows imposition of fines on defaulters and compensation to the victim. It also envisages a strong grievance redress and monitoring system, from the centre to the block level. (Zee News 12/8/11)

UN agency investigating Somalia famine food thefts (21) UN agency investigating Somalia famine food thefts United Nations: United Nations is investigating on the possible theft of food from supplies that were shipped to Somalia to counter the devastating famine, which killed tens of thousands, a spokesman said. The UN's World Food Programme will "suspend any parties found responsible" working within the agency, Farhan Haq, UN deputy spokesman, told reporters yesterday. UN has not yet revealed details of how much food has been diverted. But the announcement of the investigation came on the day, the UN Security Council made an urgent call for governments to respond to a 2.4-billion-dollar UN appeal to counter the drought in East Africa. More than 12.4 million individuals are at risk from starvation, as per the UN's emergency relief coordination agency. "In response to reports of food aid being stolen, the World Food Programme says that through its monitoring systems,

possible theft of food has been uncovered and is being investigated," Haq told a briefing. "The World Food Programme adds that it will investigate all alleged instances and suspend any parties found responsible." The agency has "rigorous monitoring and controls" in Somalia, but "due to security dangers and restrictions, humanitarian supply lines remain highly vulnerable to looting, attack and diversion by armed groups," Haq added. The 15-member Security Council expressed "serious concern" in a statement that the UN's 2.4-billion-dollar famine appeal remains less than half-funded. UN agencies are struggling to get aid to parts of Somalia that are readily controlled by the Islamist insurgents and the council warned "all parties and armed groups to ensure full, safe and unhindered access for the timely delivery of humanitarian aid." Amid rising concerns about Somalia's future with the famine adding to a crippling insurgency, the Security Council gave "strong" backing to UN efforts to help the transitional government battling to establish its authority. Somalia has had no effective government since the downfall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. (Zee News 16/8/11)

Some 45 million Indians rose above Rs.56 a day: Rep ort (21) Washington, Aug 18 (IANS): Nearly nine million Indian households, or 45 million individuals, saw their incomes rise above the threshold of $1.25 a day, or Rs.56, in the two decades ended 2010, reflecting the success of microfinance, says a survey. "A dramatic number of families moved out of poverty between 1990 and 2010," said the report, based on a survey of more than 15,000 Indian households, carried out by the India Development Foundation (IDF), a private trust that promotes market economy. This report is good news, coming seven months after a similar survey showed significant progress in Bangladesh," said Sam Daley-Harris, director of Microcredit Summit Campaign, which seeks to create a global environment tuned to eliminate poverty. "There is significant correlation in both India and Bangladesh between the presence of microfinance and the movement out of poverty in the rural areas of both the countries, especially in the early years," Daley-Harris added. The report comes in the wake of a hugely successful initial public offering in 2010 by SKS, a private microfinance firm in India, followed by serious charges of malpractices in the country and the subsequent action by the Andhra Pradesh government. Those who carried out the survey sought to point out that microfinance sector in India barely existed before 1998. At the same time, the survey was largely completed before the microfinance crisis in Andhra Pradesh erupted at the end of 2010. "While it is clear changes are needed in Indian microfinance, it is also critical we not throw out the baby with the bath water," said Shubhashis Gangopadhyay, lead researcher for the survey. "Families in rural communities need access to financial services from the microfinance institutions that know their clients and are committed to improvements in their lives," Gangopadhyay added. Globally, microfinance has been facing criticism from the academic community. A series of randomized control trials have questioned the effectiveness of microfinance as a poverty reduction tool. But these studies have also met with questions of their own. These surveys are a part of the programes of Microcredit Summit Campaign, a US advocacy, that wants to fulfil the UN Millennium Development Goals of cutting poverty in half by 2015. The survey will be discussed at their summit at Valladolid Spain in November. (Deccan Herald 18/8/11)

Govt seeks comments on Slum Dwellers Act (21) PUNE: The union government has sought the state government's comments on the draft Model Property Rights to Slum Dwellers Act, 2011. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation has circulated the draft among the state governments. The Act states that every landless person living in a slum area in any city or urban area (on a date to be specified by the State Government) shall be entitled to a dwelling space at an affordable cost and every slum dweller shall be given a legal entitlement, which shall be in the name of the female head of the household or in the joint name of the male head of the household and his wife. According to the draft the dwelling space so provided shall not be transferable but shall be mortgageable for the purpose of raising housing loan. " It provides for the establishment of City / Urban Area Slum Redevelopment Committee for carrying out functions specified under the Act and the establishment of a State Slum Redevelopment Authority to continuously monitor implementation of the Act and to recommend corrective measures wherever necessary" states the draft. (Times of India 21/8/11)

Data Collected in Caste Census to be used to Determ ine Number of Persons below Poverty Line

In Socio- Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011, the caste of all persons is being collected. Besides data on caste/tribe, the information on parameters such as occupation/activity, highest educational level completed, disability, religion, housing/dwelling, employment and income characteristics, assets, land owned, etc. are also being collected in rural areas. In addition, specific details on main source of income/earning, chronic illness and amenities are also being collected in urban areas. As such, the count along with the socio-economic profile of each caste would be available from Socio-Economic and Caste Census 2011. The data collected in the SECC will also be used by the Ministry of Rural Development and Ministry of Housing and Poverty Alleviation to determine number of persons living below the poverty line. In the pilot survey, operational procedure of SECC was tested in a few rural and urban areas of Haryana before launching on full scale. The caste returns in the Pilot Survey show that the castes encompassing all categories have been recorded. The said returns include various castes, communities including Scheduled Castes and OBCs/BCs etc. The Pilot Survey reveals that coverage is complete and we get a comprehensive account of the population count. As per Census Act, 1948, details of individuals collected in the Census are confidential and cannot be made public. In the SECC, it is proposed to publish all the details collected except religion and caste of individual in the local areas in order to bring transparency and invite claims and objections. This list would further be placed before the Gram Sabha in rural areas and in Ward/Committee in urban areas. In order to allow such a process, the SECC is not being conducted under the Census Act and has been taken up as a separate exercise. SECC is to be completed in a phased manner from June to December,2011 in all States and UTs. This was stated by the Minister of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Shri Jitendra Singh in written reply to questions in the Rajya Sabha today. (PIB, Govt. of India, 24/8/11)

Poverty-free project to cover 21 lakh families (21) THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The ‘Poverty–free Kerala’ project for supply of rice at Re.1 a kg to people living Below Poverty Line (BPL) will cover 20.57 lakh families initially. Defence Minister A.K. Antony will inaugurate the scheme at a function to be held at the Santhigiri Asramom ground at Pothencode, near here, on Saturday. Food and Civil Supplies Minister T.M. Jacob said in an article released for publication that 14.61 lakh BPL cardholders and 5.96 lakh families covered under the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) would be the beneficiaries of the scheme. Besides, occupants in orphanages approved by the government would be eligible for rice at Re.1 a kg. The Minister said 35 kg of rice would be supplied at the subsidised price to the AAY families every month while the BPL families would get 25 kg of rice at Re.1 a kg. Orphanages would be provided with rice of 5 kg for each occupant every month. The quantum of rice needed for the scheme will be 36,518 tonnes for BPL families and 20,853 tonnes for the AAY families. Mr. Jacob announced that the government would also provide an ‘Onam kit’ containing provisions to every BPL and AAY family during the festival season free of cost. The kit would contain rice and sugar besides other essential articles. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy would inaugurate the scheme at the function at Pothencode. The total cost of the kits would be Rs.19 crore. He added that the scheme for immediate issue of ration cards on application would be inaugurated by Union Minister of State for Food and Consumer Affairs K.V. Thomas at the function. Transport Minister V.S. Sivakumar would inaugurate the distribution of five kg of free rice to pupils during the festival season. The Minister expressed the hope that the scheme would free the State of poverty. None would have to go hungry when rice was available at Re.1 a kg. (The Hindu 26/8/11)

He consumes engine oil, paper ash daily (21) MYSORE: A 29-year-old man consumes 3-4 litres of crude oil or engine oil per day and eats newspaper ash for over 18 years. Kumar (29), a native of Chikkamagalur district, was abandoned by his parents at a young age and spent much of his days on the streets. Hunger forced him to consume petroleum products like crude and engine oil from vehicles near garages and bus stops. He came looking for a job was in Mandya going round and showing interest to join construction firms. However, the public surprised by the habit of Kumar rounded him in Silver Jubilee park , Mandya. Kumar started eating newspaper ash in the park. The public relaxing at the park reached him and offered money to have food at a near by hotel. However, he politely refused to accept money for food as he vomits when ever he tries to have food. The public raised money for him and helped him to return to his native village. He said that poverty and hunger forced him to depend on consuming minimum of one litre oil for every meal.(NIE 27/8/11)

Rice for Re1 a kg for Kerala's poor (21)

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Starting September, everyone below the poverty line (BPL) in Kerala will get 25kg of rice at Re1 per kg, one of the main promises of the United Democratic Front's election manifesto. Defence Minister AK Anthony launched the flagship programme of the Oommen Chandy government Saturday, He handed over rice to five people. In brief remarks, he regretted the gap between good intent and implementation. "Even to get a programme of the government implemented, palms have to be greased," Anthony said. "The stage is such and there is strong resentment to this across the country." Kerala has 7.4 million ration card holders in the state. Of these, 2.1 million are below the poverty line, who get rice for Rs.2 per kg under a programme of the former Left Front government. "We expect to bring another 1.2 million card holders under the scheme," Chandy said at the launch. "We expect that October onwards the number of beneficiaries will touch 3.3 million." (DNA 27/8/11)

Cong consumer cell alleges misuse of BPL funds (21) PUNE: The consumer cell of the Congress has alleged that the health department of the Pune Municipal Corporation promised Rs 1 lakh meant for Below Poverty Line (BPL) families to cover medical expenses of a non resident Indian (NRI), who died in a city hospital recently. In a press statement issued on August 26, Ramesh Iyer, president of the city Congress Committee Consumer Protection Cell (CCPC), alleged: "Rajlaxmi Balasubramanian, an NRI settled in the USA, had come to Pune to attend a religious ceremony in July. She fell ill and was admitted to the ICU of the KEM hospital. Unfortunately, on July 12 she expired. The total hospital bill was Rs 6,03,558 (of which) Rs 4,98,478 was paid by credit card. On July 13, the deputy health chief of the PMC issued a letter to KEM hospital in which it was mentioned that the PMC will be paying the balance amount of Rs 1 lakh under the BPL health assistance scheme." (Times of India 28/8/11)

Media pressure may help speed up food security move s (21) S. Viswanathan (Opinion) : More than two years have passed and there seems to be no progress worth speaking about in making the promised law that will guarantee food for the people. The promise came from the UPA-2 as part of its election manifesto in 2009. It was a time of recovery from a time of economic troubles. The impact of the global economic slowdown came on top of the agrarian crisis and the closure of several industrial undertakings, resulting in the loss of jobs and wage cuts that impoverished thousands of workers. Economists have warned of yet another economic crisis, which may turn out to be more severe than the 2008 financial crisis and recession. Nearer home, the Reserve Bank of India has warned of higher inflation and a slowdown in economic growth. The food inflation rate is dangerously close to 10 per cent. Seen in this context, the need to speed up the process of providing food security to hundreds of millions of people, whose ranks are likely to increase in the months to come, stands out. The news media have a role to play in meeting this challenge. Last year, it was a news report in a national daily that drew the attention of the highest court of the land to the fact that thousands of tonnes of wheat and rice were rotting in warehouses. The Supreme Court of India gave a direction to the government that if it could not store the grain, it could give it to the people to eat. The 2010 Global Hunger Index shows that India holds the 67th rank among 122 developing countries. It has also stated that “serious hunger” is prevalent in all the States. According to the Index, 42 per cent of the world's underweight children live in India. A 2005 study showed 46 per cent children under three years of age were underweight. These studies bring home the point that the food security law must urgently ensure not just food — but nutritious food. Following several rounds of discussion at various levels for about two years, the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on Food cleared the Food Security Bill in the second week of July 2011. The Bill seeks to cover 75 per cent of the BPL (Below Poverty Line) population and 50 per cent of the urban population. The Bill thus entitles 68 per cent of the country's population to food security. Each beneficiary under the BPL (now renamed the priority sector) will be entitled to 7 kg of food grains; rice will be provided at Rs. 3 a kg and wheat at Rs. 2 a kg. In the general category, each identified beneficiary will be given 3-4 kg at half the minimum support price the government pays to the farmers from whom they procure rice and wheat. The government plans to introduce the Bill in the monsoon session of Parliament after consulting Chief Ministers. The total subsidy is estimated to be in the region of Rs. 95,000 crore. The final bill appears to be a heavily doctored version of the draft presented by the National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by Congress President Sonia Gandhi. For instance, although the NAC proposed that 90 per cent of the rural population must be covered for food security, the official draft has reduced the coverage to 75 per cent. The UPA government's refusal to accept the Universal Public Distribution System recommended by several experts in the field has come under sharp criticism

from political leaders and social activists. Another major criticism is against the cash transfers system, which will only place the beneficiaries at the mercy of retailers. The Bill in its present form may not be acceptable to many State governments, which follow much better norms in defining the beneficiaries as well as their entitlements. Even the Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, C. Rangarajan, who was against the inclusion of APL households among the beneficiaries has apparently changed his stand and said that they could be given legal entitlements, though with a lesser quantity of food grains. There are some positive elements in the Bill such as the inclusion of the mid-day meal scheme among the beneficiaries and the provision of cooked and nutritional food for pregnant and lactating women. But among those who were actively working for a strong and effective Food Security Act, there is an overwhelming feeling of disappointment and being let down. The news media, particularly the Indian language press and television channels, can still play a more informative and insightful pro-active role in educating readers and audiences on the vital issues at stake. Nothing can bring out the social responsibility role of the media than the challenge of covering mass deprivation and building a public agenda to overcome massive social deficits on the food and nutrition fronts. (The Hindu 30/8/11)

Dismal progress in social housing (21) The progress in providing housing for the poor, as revealed by data recently released by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, is way off target. This calls for a serious questioning of the approach and capabilities of government institutions to deliver badly needed social housing. The Interest Subsidy Scheme for Housing the Urban Poor (ISHUP), launched in 2008 to provide an interest subsidy of five per cent on a loan amount of Rs.100,000 to the economically weaker section and lower income group, has so far benefited only 7,805 people as against the 2012 target of 310,000. Although a sum of Rs.1,378 crore was allotted, merely about Rs.6.5 crore has so far been utilised. Progress on the flagship project, the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, which has a provision of Rs.50,000 crore for the period 2005-2012, is no better. Only about 30 per cent of houses sanctioned for the poor under this scheme have been built. The lack of funds is often projected as the main reason for the dismal situation of social housing. It is now evident that, more than funds, poor conceptualisation of policies, procedural inefficiency, and ineffective construction practices are the major impediments. ISHUP has failed to deliver because it is conceptually flawed. Policymakers assumed that the poor had access to land and needed only financial support to build their houses. As a result, the focus was on making credit easily available. However, the reality is that neither cheap land nor affordable houses are in good supply. If the demand for social housing is to be met, in addition to rectifying policies, construction practices and performance regimes need to be greatly improved. In particular, State-level housing boards must improve their capacity in order to fully utilise the available funds and deliver more houses. The experience of the United Kingdom offers valuable lessons in this area. Since 1998, after the Construction Task Force set up by the U.K. government published its seminal report ‘Rethinking Construction', local authorities earnestly adopted best building practices. They formed productive alliances with the construction industry and adopted modern methods that increased the production of homes four-fold. Specific annual benchmarks, such as a 10 per cent reduction in cost and construction time, were set and procurement processes were streamlined. The financial gains from these improvements were invested in the housing projects. It is only by adopting such innovative practices and radically changing the approach to the provision of social housing can the vision of making cities slum-free be realised. (The Hindu 1/8/11)

India database tries to connect poor to growth (21) KALDARI, INDIA: Ankaji Bhai Gangar, a 49-year-old subsistence farmer, stood in line in this remote village until, for the first time in his life, he squinted into the soft glow of a computer screen. His name, year of birth and address were recorded. A worker guided Gangar's rough fingers to the glowing green surface of a scanner to record his fingerprints. He peered into an iris scanner shaped like binoculars that captured the unique patterns of his eyes. With that, Gangar would be assigned a 12-digit number, the first official proof that he exists. He can use the number, along with a thumbprint, to identify himself anywhere in country. It will allow him to gain access to welfare benefits, open a bank account or get a cellphone far from his home village, something that is still impossible for many people in India. "Maybe we will get some help," Gangar said. Across this sprawling, chaotic nation, workers are creating what will be the world's largest biometric database, a mind-bogglingly complex collection of 1.2 billion identities. But even more radical than its size is the scale of its ambition: to reduce the inequality corroding India's economic rise by digitally linking every one of India's people to the country's growth juggernaut. For decades, India's

sprawling and inefficient bureaucracy has spent billions of dollars to try to drag the poor out of poverty. But much of the money is wasted or simply ends up trapping the poor in villages like Kaldari, in a remote corner of the western state of Maharashtra, dependent on local handouts that they can lose if they leave home. So now it is trying something different. Using the same powerful technology that transformed the country's private economy, the Indian government has created a tiny startup of skilled administrators and programmers to help transform - or circumvent - the crippling bureaucracy that is a legacy of its socialist past. "What we are creating is as important as a road," said Nandan M. Nilekani, the billionaire software mogul whom the government has tapped to create India's identity database. "It is a road that in some sense connects every individual to the state." For its proponents, the 12-digit ID is an ingenious solution to a particularly bedeviling problem. Most of India's poorest citizens are trapped in a system of village-based identity proof that has had the perverse effect of making migration, which is essential to any growing economy, much harder. The ID project also has the potential to reduce the kind of corruption that has led millions of Indians to take to the streets in mass demonstrations in recent weeks, spurred on by the hunger strike of an anticorruption activist named Anna Hazare. By allowing electronic transmission and verification of many government services, the identity system would make it much harder for corrupt bureaucrats to steal citizens' benefits. India's prime minister has frequently cited the new system in response Hazare's demands. The new number-based system, known as Aadhaar, or foundation, would be used to verify the identity of any Indian anywhere in the country within eight seconds, using inexpensive hand-held devices linked to the mobile phone network. It would also serve as a shortcut to building real citizenship in a society where identity is almost always mediated through a group - caste, kin and religion. Aadhaar would for the first time identify each Indian as an individual. The identity project is, in a way, an acknowledgment that India has failed to bring its poor along the path to prosperity. India may be the world's second-fastest-growing economy, but more than 400 million Indians live in poverty, according to government figures. Nearly half of children younger than 5 are underweight. (The Economic Times 2/9/11)

Starving India may get the Bill but not the food (2 1) Mumbai | Agency: DNA: Long promised by the UPA government, the food security bill will be tabled in parliament in December this year. However, the National Advisory Council (NAC), which drafted the proposal, is tussling with the government over the “dilution and misdirection” of the Bill. The final Bill diverges from the original NAC draft on key issues: adoption of alternatives to the PDS such as cash transfers, the risk of inflation due to cash subsidies, the omission of legal guarantees and punishments for non-compliance, and the continued misidentification of the poor. Providing food too expensive It has been estimated by the ministry of food and public distribution that the total food subsidy bill will balloon to Rs1,10,600 crore if entitlements recommended by the NAC are incorporated into it. This amount, according to Union food minister KV Thomas, is for investments towards increasing productivity, PDS reforms, and improving storage capacity and transportation. R Ramakumar, agronomist and professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, believes that faulty identification and procedural missteps are increasing the cost. Vandana Shiva, environmental activist calls the Bill “economic disenfranchisement for political gain”. She adds, “The costs are being raised due to the wasteful allocation on the identification of the poor: pink and yellow cards [pink cardholders are entitled to rice; yellow cardholders draw rations other than rice] is bureaucratic nonsense.”While overdependence on a leaky PDS has failed to holistically address the problem of food security, it safeguards farmers’ interests. “This change is one of the most anti-farmer steps the government could have taken. This is being done primarily so that the rural sector is opened up to MNCs which want to buy directly,” says agrarian lobbyist Jagdish Manekar. Another problem cited is that there is no guarantee that the cash transfer, as envisaged in the government draft, will be an antidote to the problems of the PDS. Food is controlled by women, and there is a strong possibility that it will reach the stomach of the child. In most families, however, cash tends to be controlled by men. When pressed as to why the government wants to shift to cash transfers, Manekar admits that alternatives to the PDS do help. “Models of subsidy delivery other than the PDS, such as food stamps and cash transfers, should be looked into. Research has shown that the PDS provides low quality of grain and their availability is unpredictable,” he explains. “The argument in favour of cash transfers is that they increase the resources available to households without ruining the market balance or even individual choice. A subsidy will result in both of these. Subsidies will reduce the market price, and cannot allow everyone to benefit.” Who will watch the watchmen? What of legal redressals, checks and balances, and supervision at the micro level? They have been wiped away. “In the NAC draft, there was a provision for a

food commissioner who had the powers to impose penalties, much like a lokayukta. This has been removed,” says Ramakumar. “The minimalist perspective of the NFSA on food security has no space for legal guarantees to enforce the law’s provisions among groups that aren’t automatically included in the priority list.” The Bill only provides for a system of commissions which are weak due to their inability to make binding recommendations. The NFSA needs to link redressals to the criminal justice system, outlining penalties and punishments for non-compliance and neglect of duties,” he advises. Who’s really poor? Jean Dreze, the developmental economist who conceptualised the first draft of the NREGA, quit his membership of the NAC in June over the food security issue. A vocal critic of the UPA leadership’s views on the proposed Food Security Bill, Dreze is one of the key architects of the social security programme that has led to a public battle between the council on one side and the PMO and the Planning Commission on the other. The biggest problem, seen by Dreze as a “continuation of the worst of the pre-existing policies”, is that of identification. The poverty line, already set at an abysmally low level of Rs20 daily for the urban poor, has been reshaped into Priority, General and Excluded Classes. “Beyond this renaming, there is no change in the approach to classification,” says Ramakumar. “The present system’s ideology of exclusion is continued here.” Staging a legislative intervention. How can the Bill be saved? “The PDS needs to be made universal, barring from it only those that meet the simple and transparent exclusion criteria of owning property worth more than 10 lakh, motor vehicles, and working in the government,” says Dreze. “The excluded category should be expanded and in turn, the priority category should also be increased.” The universal system of PDS is one that enables a time-based and differential system of allocation to people both above and below the poverty line. Economists weighing in during the preparation of the draft have opined that the idea of universal PDS in the poorest 200 districts needs to be reinstated. The Bill was then referred to an empowered group of ministers, which in turn asked the Planning Commission to rework the contours of the legislation. However, NAC, at its last meeting on July 1, insisted that the entitlement should be universal. The Plan panel subsequently reworked the draft Bill accepting in principle the concept of universalisation but insisted on differential pricing — one for BPL and another for above the poverty line — through PDS. “We should look at the system of identification in Kerala for an example of an alternative. They use nine parameters such as no house, no regularly employed family member, no access to water, and so on, and if the family doesn’t match up to four or more, they are identified as poor,” explains Manekar. “Failing this, the government should look at decentralised solutions which can be implemented at a micro-level, such as entrusting gram panchayats with funds.” (DNA 4/9/11)

Only 4 lakh tonnes of foodgrains lifted for poor di stricts: Thomas (21) New Delhi: Of the 50 lakh tonnes of additional foodgrains earmarked for 150 poor districts of the country, only four lakh tonnes were lifted for distribution so far, the Lok Sabha was told here on Friday. Replying to a Calling Attention Motion, K.V. Thomas, Minister of State for Food and Public Distribution said while the Centre agreed to the directions of the Supreme Court to allocate 50 lakh tonne additional foodgrains to 150 poorest districts, so far only four lakh tonne were lifted for distribution. The Supreme Court in May directed the Centre to allocate 50 lakh tonnes additional foodgrains for distribution in these poorest districts in the next two months to prevent any starvation death. According to Mr. Thomas, while States like Punjab wanted wheat to be moved out of the State this season to be stored elsewhere, there were other wheat producing States also. Thus, the government was trying to “balance the situation.” He said with States like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan also producing more wheat, agencies have to procure the foodgrains from these States also, besides from Punjab. Mr. Thomas rejected suggestions that government godowns were storing more buffer stock than required. He said while there was a minimum buffer stock, there was nothing as “maximum” buffer stock and it changed every season depending on factors like productivity. Initiating the debate, Harsimrat Badal (SAD) said the government was annually spending Rs. 23,000 crore on transporting foodgrains to godowns which lacked storage facility. She suggested that the government should distribute foodgrains to the needy. (Times of India 5/9/11)

35,000 malnourished kids in Nashik alone (21) Even as 1,700 kids starved to death in last one year, electronic machines supposed to be provided by the state to weigh them are either inaccurate or absent, officials claim Even as the metropolis is spending enormously to wipeout malaria, typhoid and other diseases from within city limits, villages and tribal areas beyond are ailing with emaciated children. Latest reports from Nashik cite that there are 16,662 severely

malnourished children and 18,228 moderately malnourished children between 0-6 years of age. The state sanctioned Rs 1.66 crore for 4,631 electronic weighing machines for Nashik, which fall short of the requirement of the 4,776 anganwadis in the district These undernourished children, living in tribal and non-tribal villages, are roughing it out in unhygienic conditions, with little to eat. The scarcity and hard life claimed 1,104 children in tribal areas and 619 in non-tribal areas in the district between August 2010 and August 2011. In a monthly report presented by the zilla parishad in August, a majority of the malnourished children come from interior and tribal hamlets. The total population of children in the 0-6 age group is 4,49,363 of which 4,30,223 have been weighed, said. the report. Inaccurate? The want of weighing machines and their reported inaccuracy only compounds the problem, officials said. The State Women and Child Development department sanctioned Rs 1.66 crore for 4,631 electronic weighing machines for Nashik, which fall short of the requirement of the 4,776 anganwadis in the district. Moreover, while the machines have not reached most of the anganwadis yet, claim officials, those that are there give inaccurate measurements, defeating the purpose they were bought for. "Some weighing machines have been sent to anganwadis, but we are waiting for more to arrive. These electronic machines would provide accurate data as opposed to the weighing scales that were used earlier. One cannot tamper with this data," said Sangita Patil, chairperson of the Women and Child Welfare committee in the district. MiD DAY found that most of the anganwadis in Harsul taluka, which has a large population of malnourished children, did not have these electronic machines. Only the primary health centre in Shirasgaon village had them, but they had precision problems. A doctor on duty there said on the condition of anonymity, "The last three digits of the figure the new weighing machine displays are always rounded off to multiples of 100, which isn't accurate. For example, if a child weighs 2 kilos and 556 grams, the machine would show 2 kilos 500 grams. So we have to revert to using the normal weighing scale." The collector of Nashik, P Velrasu, is of the opinion that there is no holistic approach to deal with chronic malnutrition. Children are taken care of only up to the age of six, while adolescent girls, who also need supervision, are left unto their own devices. "The girls, who are very weak and show a poor haemoglobin count, get married at a young age. On top of that they labour in the fields even when they six or seven months into pregnancy. So their babies are born unhealthy. The department needs to tend to these girls right from childhood, through adolescence until after motherhood. Their children should also be taken care of." Asked about the disturbing number of malnourished kids, the collector said, "Although the numbers of deaths have reduced, the method of measuring malnourishment has changed. Earlier, the grading system classified children under grades 1, 2, 3, 4, grade 1 being the healthiest. Now they are classified as normal, moderately malnourished, and severely malnourished. So the numbers in a single category have increased." He added that the welfare scheme should be a continuous process. The system of restoring the health of one batch of children and leaving them on their own should be avoided. Ranjit Kumar, CEO of the zilla parishad, said, "The machines are being supplied as per orders from higher authorities, and they have been working fine so far. I will check with the department about the problems." What is starvation? It is a severe reduction in vitamin, nutrient and energy intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, death. The term inanition refers to the symptoms and effects of starvation. The WHO also states that malnutrition is by far the biggest contributor to child mortality, present in half of all cases. What is malnutrition? As per World Health Organisation, malnutrition essentially means bad nourishment. It concerns not enough as well as too much food, the wrong types of food, and the body's response to a wide range of infections that result in mal-absorption of nutrients or the inability to use nutrients properly to maintain health. Clinically, malnutrition is characterised by inadequate or excess intake of protein, energy, and micronutrients such as vitamins, and the frequent infections and disorders that result. The state has adopted WHO's definition for its purposes. (Mid Day 7/9/11)

Delhi government's 'Arogya Kosh' to help poor patie nts (21) New Delhi, Sep 6 : Delhi Cabinet today decided to set up 'Arogya Kosh' to provide financial assistance to Below Poverty Line (BPL) category patients suffering from life threatening diseases. This was decided in a Cabinet meeting presided over by Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. All those patients who have been issued either a BPL or Antodya Ration Card would be eligible for financial help from the 'Kosh'. Besides, the patients who have annual family income up to Rs one lakh would also be benefited. Assistance up to Rs 1.5 lakh would be provided to the patients. However, in case of certain treatments such as bone-marrow transplantation, kidney transplantation and liver transplantation, the maximum assistance up to 2.5 lakh would be given on one-time basis. While briefing the media after the meeting, the Chief Minister

said the Delhi government will release an amount of Rs 100 crore as corpus fund to make Arogya Kosh functional. Initially, the government will release an amount of Rs 10 crore to Arogya Kosh, she informed. (New Kerala 7/9/11)

US food insecurity; falls, still affects millions ( 21) Washington, DC | Agency: Reuters: The percentage of US households where adults sometimes go hungry or cannot put enough food on the table fell last year, but the problem still affects millions, government data released on Wednesday shows. In 2010, 5.4 percent, or 6.4 million households, had very low food security, defined as a reduction of food intake by at least one household member and a disruption of eating patterns because the household lacked resources for food. The prevalence of such low levels of food security declined from 5.7 percent in 2009. The greatest improvement was among households with children, women living alone, and those with annual incomes below 185 percent of the poverty line, according to a U.S. Agriculture Department report, "Household Food Security in the United States in 2010." But USDA Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Kevin Concannon said in a conference call with reporters, "As long as hunger exists in this country of ours, we can and must do more." The report said 85.5 percent of American households were food secure last year, meaning they had access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life for all their members, said the USDA's Economic Research Service, which compiled the report. But the remaining households -- 14.5 percent, or 17.2 million -- were food insecure at least some time during 2010. The overall rate of food insecure households was essentially unchanged from 2009. Despite the near stagnant rate of food insecure households, 14.5 percent is still one of the highest recorded levels since national monitoring of food security began in 1995. The rate of food insecurity spiked in 2008 due to the economic recession and remained high in following years. The more severe range of very low food security followed a similar pattern, increasing sharply from 2007 to 2008, and declining slightly from 2009 to 2010. Nearly 60 percent of all food-insecure households participated in at least one of the three largest federal food and nutrition assistance programs during November 2010, the month before the annual survey on which the report was based. The December 2010 survey covered 44,757 households, a representative sample of 119 million U.S. households. (DNA 8/9/11)

Pakistanis hungry as steep hike in food prices (21) Islamabad, Sep 12 : Food prices have shot up in Pakistan by a whopping 74 percent in past three years, leading to an increase in hunger in the country, the authorities say. Official findings showed that the cost of basic food items went up by 74 percent from June 2008 to 2011. "Given the continued sharp increase in prices of staples, mainly wheat, vegetable ghee and sugar, during the second half of 2010, and follow up in the first half of 2011, the number of people suffering from chronic hunger is likely to have increased further," the Planning Commission said. There was an increase of 74 percent - from Rs.960 to Rs.1,670 -in the price for 2,150 calories, which is needed for sustenance. The wheat flour price went up by 78 percent in three years and that of sugar by 163 percent. Meat, pulses and milk prices went up by 103 percent, 89 percent and 85 percent, respectively. Pakistan has a population of over 170 million. The Planning Commission in its annual report on the change in the cost of the food basket in 2010-11 said: "Given the national scenario, conventionally agreed key risk factors underlying causes of vulnerability, such as poverty hunger, income inequality and now food price have added new dimensions to vulnerability." (New Kerala 12/9/11)

Govt seeks public comments on Draft Food Security B ill (21) New Delhi, Sept 14: The Government has sought comments on the proposed Food Security Bill, which seeks to provide legal entitlement to subsidised foodgrains for up to three-fourth of the rural population and half of the urban households. The Ministry of Food and Consumer Affairs has placed the draft National Food Security Bill, 2011 on its Web site http://fcamin.nic.in for public comments. The proposed entitlement is 7 kg of foodgrains per person, per month for ‘priority' or below poverty line households. This will be at an issue price of Rs 3 a kg for rice, Rs 2 a kg for wheat and Re 1 a kg of coarse grains. For general or above poverty line households, the entitlement has been reduced to 3 kg of foodgrains for one person as against the earlier 4 kg recommended by the National Advisory Council (NAC). This is at an issue price not exceeding 50 per cent of the minimum support price (MSP) of wheat and coarse grains and derived MSP of rice from paddy. The 75 per cent rural population would include at least 46 per cent

from the ‘priority' households. The 50 per cent urban households would comprise at least 28 per cent priority families. Other provisions in the proposed Bill include legal right to take home ration/meal to women, children, special groups including destitute and homeless, emergency and disaster affected persons and for people living in starvation. It also includes right to receive food security allowance from concerned State Government in cases of failure to supply the entitled foodgrains or meal to the targeted persons. The State Governments will have to set up a State Food Security Commission for monitoring and review of the implementation of the legislation. A three-tier grievance redressal mechanism is being proposed at the district, State and national levels for transparency and accountability in implementing the Legislation. The Department of Food and Public Distribution has prepared the Draft National Food Security Bill. This is after taking into consideration the recommendations of the National Advisory Council, the expert committee headed by Dr C. Rangarajan, Chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister and consultations with States, Central Ministries and other stake holders. (Hindu Business Line 14/9/11)

'1-in-6 Americans living in poverty' (21) Washington: One in six Americans are now living below poverty line, the US Census Bureau said in a report, reflecting the adverse impact of economic crisis on common man. "The nation's official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 per cent, up from 14.3 per cent in 2009 - the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate," Census Bureau said in its report. "There were 46.2 million people in poverty in 2010, up from 43.6 million in 2009 – the fourth consecutive annual increase and the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published," it said. These findings are contained in the report 'Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010.'The government defines the poverty line as income of USD 22,314 (about Rs 10 lakh) a year for a family of four and USD 11,139 (about Rs 5 lakh) for individual. Census Bureau said, the number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 49.0 million in 2009 to 49.9 million in 2010, while the percentage without coverage – 16.3 per cent – was not statistically different from the rate in 2009. Since 2007, the year before the most recent recession, real median household income has declined 6.4 per cent and is 7.1 per cent below the median household income peak that occurred prior to the 2001 recession in 1999. The percentages are not statistically different from each another, the Census Bureau said. The poverty rate increased for children younger than 18 (from 20.7 per cent in 2009 to 22.0 per cent in 2010) and people 18 to 64 (from 12.9 per cent in 2009 to 13.7 per cent in 2010), while it was not statistically different for people 65 and older (9.0 per cent), it said. Similar to the patterns observed for the poverty rate in 2010, the number of people in poverty increased for children younger than 18 (15.5 million in 2009 to 16.4 million in 2010) and people 18 to 64 (24.7 million in 2009 to 26.3 million in 2010) and was not statistically different for people 65 and older (3.5 million), the Census Bureau said. Among race groups, real median income declined for white and black households between 2009 and 2010, while changes for Asian and Hispanic-origin households were not statistically different. Real median income for each race and Hispanic-origin group has not yet recovered to the pre-2001 recession all-time highs, the report said. The Census Bureau said there has been considerable impact of the economic crisis on the people here. Median household income declined the first full year following the December 2007 to June 2009 recession, as well as in the first full year following three other recessions (March 2001 to November 2001, January 1980 to July 1980 and December 1969 to November 1970). However, household income increased the first full year following the November 1973 to March 1975 recession, and the changes following the July 1990 to March 1991 and July 1981 to November 1982 recessions were not statistically significant, it said. The poverty rate and the number of people in poverty increased in the first calendar year following the end of the last three recessions. For the recessions that ended in 1961 and 1975, the poverty rate decreased in the next full calendar year, it said. (Financial Express 14/9/11)

Let there be no starvation deaths: Supreme Court (2 1) New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Chief Secretaries of all the States to specify how much additional foodgrains were required for them under the Public Distribution System to ensure that there was no starvation death. A Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma, passing orders on a petition filed by the People's Union for Civil Liberties on streamlining of the PDS, granted two weeks for the States for file their response. If they failed to do so, it would be deemed that no additional foodgrains were required for them from the Centre, the Bench said. It asked the Centre to computerise the PDS to stop pilferage and corruption. The Justice Wadhwa Committee, in its report, told the court that

pilferage and corruption occurred at every stage of the PDS and the situation could be salvaged to a large extent by computerisation. A public portal with complete information related to the PDS might be made. It should also have information on the date and the quantity of foodgrains supplied to fair price shops every month. The committee said: “A drive can be started to eliminate fake and ghost ration cards. A comparison with data available with other departments like election, census, etc, gives the quick estimates about the bogus cards. It was seen that at some places, units in the ration cards exceeded even the populations of the area. These practices should be checked immediately. This can also be linked up with the Socio Economic Census in Rural Areas, which is expected to be completed within this year itself. The Government of India shall ensure that all the State governments prepare a time-bound action plan for complete computerisation of the PDS within three months. Strict deadlines may be fixed in the action plan and these will be submitted before the court within three months.” (The Hindu 15/9/11)

Specify quantum of additional foodgrains, states to ld (21) New Delhi, Sept 14, DHNS: The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked all state governments to specify the quantum of additional foodgrains required to eliminate chances of malnutrition and starvation. A bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma directed the Centre to allocate additional five million tonnes of foodgrains to be distributed in 150 poorest districts of the country under the supervision of Justice D P Wadhwa Committee appointed by the court. The court also said that it is the responsibility of the state governments to provide food to the poor and ensure that no one died due to starvation and malnutrition. “No one should die of starvation and malnutrition in poor districts. We direct Chief Secretaries of all states to indicate within two weeks how much additional foodgrains are required,” the court said. The court also directed all the chief secretaries to ensure that proper computerisation of the public distribution system in order to reduce the chances of pilferage and corruption. “There is a huge pilferage and corruption in PDS and it could be reduced by computerisation. This has to be done at a great speed. You have to computerise the whole system in order to bring total transparency,” the Bench said. The Bench was hearing a public interest litigation filed by Peoples Union for Civil Liberties alleging large-scale corruption and irregularities in the PDS mechanism. The apex court had earlier said that all states should emulate the PDS model adopted by Tamil Nadu which has been supplying rice at Rs 1 per kg and subsidised fortified atta and pulses to BPL families without much hassles and complaint of pilferage and misappropriation. The court on July 22 had questioned the rationale of below poverty line criteria once again by directing the Planning Commission to explain as to how it proposed to provide 2400 calories to every citizen by fixing Rs 10 in rural and Rs 20 in urban areas. Deccan Herald 15/9/11)

Ramesh opposes cap on counting poor in states (21) New Delhi, September 19, 2011: Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has called for removal of ceilings on poverty estimation, which restrict the number of poor who can claim benefits from government schemes. His ministry is currently conducting a decennial (once in 10 years) census of the country's rural poor and a similar exercise will be launched for the first time in urban areas soon. But what is becoming a political issue is the planning commission's acceptance of the report of the Suresh Tendulkar Committee, which pegged the proportion of BPL people at 37.2% of the country's population, with respective state-wise limits. The committee's estimates are based on the consumer expenditure survey of 2004-05 conducted by the National Sample Survey. The states are opposing this limit on the number of poor people who would be entitled to the central government's schemes and subsidies such as foodgrains under the public distribution system (PDS). The government is also working on a food security bill whose cost analysis is based on Tendulkar's cut-offs. Various state governments want the BPL survey to be the basis for fixing the number of poor to give them access to central schemes. Congress states like Andhra Pradesh, which categorised 80% of its people as poor, disagreed with the cap of 29.9% on the state. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, who says that a large number of people in his state are poor, is leading the protest. With the planning commission not being persuaded by his arguments, the chief minister has sought Ramesh's support. "Poverty numbers constructed by sampling consumer expenditure cannot be expected to correspond to numbers emerging from a census. Caps are arbitrary, divisive and theoretically unjustified," Kumar wrote in a letter to Ramesh. Ramesh told HT he endorsed Kumar's arguments. "I opine there should be no prior caps. I am discussing the issue with the Planning Commission," he said. The commission's point is it that there needs to be a prescribed limit as the Centre cannot provide for everyone categorised as poor by the states. Kumar said that the overall fiscal burden

on the Centre is manageable without caps as at the all-India level, the BPL survey increases poverty numbers by only 4% over Tendulkar's estimates. (Hindustan Times 19/9/11)

UN targets to slash poverty by 2015 (21) New York, Sep 22 : Eminent personalities from the private sector, academia, governments and civil society have agreed to lead a series of targeted actions to boost the achievement of the United Nations targets to slash hunger, poverty, disease and lack of access to education by 2015. The MDG Advocacy Group was set up last year by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to help him build political will and mobilize global action towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Meeting at UN Headquarters on the margins of the 66th General Assembly, the Group endorsed an action plan that encourages each advocate to champion at least one of the specific MDG initiatives that are grouped in two thematic clusters: food security and sustainable growth; and education and health. “Through these initiatives, the MDG Advocates aim to generate further momentum toward MDG achievement as the 2015 deadline for meeting the Goals approaches rapidly,” states a news release on the meeting, which was co-chaired by Presidents Paul Kagame of Rwanda and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain. Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro welcomed “the important leadership, passion and expertise” provided by the Advocacy Group and noted that “targeted interventions” in support of individual Goals would foster real progress. During the meeting, the advocates also discussed the need to strengthen global advocacy on the MDGs in light of the current global economic climate and declining official development assistance (ODA), and to build strong political support for innovative financing mechanisms. Tuesday’s gathering, the second annual meeting since the group was set up in June 2010, also touched on a number of other issues, including the linkages between poverty, climate change and sustainable development in light of the upcoming UN Conference on Sustainable Development to be held next June in Brazil. The eight MDGs seek to: end poverty and hunger; achieve universal education; secure gender equality; improve child health; boost maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS; ensure environmental sustainability; and attain global partnership on development. (New Kerala 22/9/11)

Poverty of statistics (21) The Planning Commission's submission to the Supreme Court last week, defining the poor to be those with daily spending not exceeding Rs 31 in urban and Rs 25 in the rural areas is politically and economically indefensible. Such a crude cut-off, derived from the Suresh Tendulkar Committee's methodology for estimation of poverty, raises questions over the official poverty ratio of 32 per cent for 2009-10 (which is based on the same methodology). It only confirms how the ‘Great Indian Poverty Debate' has been reduced to a bizarre ‘numbers game', with the World Bank pegging the poor at over 40 per cent in 2005 and another committee under the National Advisory Council member, N.C. Saxena, arriving at a figure of 50 per cent just before the Tendulkar panel released its report in late 2009. In the meantime, the Arjun Sengupta Committee reckoned the poor and ‘vulnerable' at 77 per cent of India's population. All of this may seem a bit comical, but for the fact that the joke is at the expense of the poor. For them, being officially entitled to below-poverty-line (BPL) status can be a matter of life and death, as it promises access to a host of welfare schemes from cheap grains at ration shops to subsidised housing under the Indira Awaas Yojana. This leads to the inescapable conclusion that abstract definitions of poverty lines must be done away with and replaced with more specific information reflecting the real living conditions of households. Take the findings of the 2001 Census: that 63.6 per cent of Indian households had no latrines and only 39 per cent had access to drinking water within their premises, or 52 per cent used firewood as cooking fuel and a mere 17.5 per cent LPG. There can be no better measures of backwardness, if not poverty. The 2011 Census numbers on these indicators are not yet out; once they are, we will get a more updated picture. The Rural Development Ministry has, moreover, launched its own country-wide BPL Census exercise, to be completed by 2011-12. This Census, too, employs transparent criteria for exclusion of families from the BPL list — those owning motorised vehicles (including tractors and harvesters), having Kisan Credit Cards with credit limit above Rs 50,000, holding a government job, and so on. Given the poor credibility of official poverty estimates — and the attendant risks of excluding even the genuinely needy from the ambit of welfare schemes — there is a case to shelve their usage for public policy purposes. The Government should, instead, wait for the results of both the BPL as well as the general Census. Simultaneously, it must streamline delivery systems, weed out ineffective programmes and prioritise self-selection schemes such as MGNREGA. These can be supplemented with

intelligent use of technology, particularly biometric information-based Unique Identification cards, which probably hold the key for the future of social welfare. (Business Line 27/9/11)

HRD at odds with food security bill over definition of 'meal' (21) NEW DELHI: The HRD ministry has objected to the definition of 'meal' - ready to eat and fortified food - in the National Food Security Bill (NFSB), saying it can only mean "hot cooked meal". Commenting on the NFSB, the ministry said the bill provides for meals for would-be mothers, anganwadi children and school kids, homeless and disaster-hit people. It has said while the department of food and public distribution can make any arrangement for other category of beneficiaries, the sub-section in the bill related to school children be amended so that 'meal' is only defined as "hot cooked meal" for the Mid Day Meal (MDM) scheme to meet the specified nutritional standards. It has suggested that the bill should mention the age and the class of the students who would receive hot cooked meals. The ministry has agreed with the provision in the bill that each school should have a separate toilet for boys and girls, safe and adequate drinking water facilities and a kitchen for cooking MDM. But, it says, in case of schools in urban areas, where there could be space crunch, the use of centralized kitchen could be an option. In that case, food can be cooked in one place and hot cooked meal be transported under hygienic conditions through a reliable transport system. There could be more than one centralized kitchen in a city. The ministry has cited instances of centralized kitchens in Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Lucknow and Ahmedabad. It has demanded that since the MDM is likely to be expanded, the NFSB should have a provision to enable the Centre to make appropriate rules and regulations as and when needed. There is a growing demand to extend the MDM to class IX and X students in government-run schools. (Times of India 28/9/11)

Live on Rs 26: Kashmiri villager tells PM, Montek ( 21) Jammu, October 01, 2011: A villager from Ramban district of Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday said he has sent demand drafts of Rs 26 -- the Planning Commission's poverty line cut-off for rural areas -- to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and the commission's Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahulwalia and asked them to show how to spend a day on that amount. Darvinder Singh, a resident of Bhagote village in Ramban, about 130 km north of Jammu, said the Planning Commission's classification of poor was an "insult to crores of poor of the country".He has also sent a letter with the demand drafts, according to a release which he e-mailed to media houses across the state. In his letter, Singh asked the three senior leaders to spend a day on Rs 26 and let the other poor people of the country know how they fare on this meagre amount. Singh said despite soaring inflation, the commission was making "illogical, unjustifiable and unrealistic claims".He also urged the prime minister to "withdraw the affidavit submitted in the Supreme Court to save further embarrassment to the poor".The Planning Commission recently told the Supreme Court that poverty line for urban and rural areas could be provisionally placed at Rs 965 per capita per month (Rs 32 per day) and Rs 781 per capita per month (Rs 26 per day) respectively.(The Hindustan Times 1/10/11)

Food Bill must have strong safeguards for cash tran sfer: Jean Dreze (21) New Delhi, October 2, 2011: Food rights campaigner and former NAC member Jean Dreze has written to the Prime Minister suggesting that the proposed Food Bill should incorporate strong safeguards if the government intends to go for cash transfers instead of providing subsidised foodgrains. “We urge you to ensure that the National Food Security Act includes the strongest possible safeguards against a hasty transition from food entitlements to cash transfers,” he said in a recent letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The draft National Food Security Bill, which is likely to be introduced in the winter session of the Parliament, provides the option of cash transfer or food coupons, among others, as alternatives to a direct foodgrain entitlement. Sharing the findings of the recent survey conducted by his team on the Public Distribution System (PDS) in nine States, Prof. Dreze said States where PDS is effective are opposing the idea of cash transfer. “The reluctance (for cash transfer) was particularly strong in areas with a well-functioning PDS and among poor households... it is only in areas the PDS was not working, notably Bihar and parts of Uttar Pradesh, that we found substantial interest in cash transfers as a possible alternative,” he said. Prof. Dreze, who has recently quit the Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council (NAC) following differences over the draft Food Bill, said the reasons that PDS beneficiaries cited for opposing cash transfers were quite thoughtful and convincing. “In most cases, the reasons pertained in one way or another to food security — an overwhelming concern for poor households,” he said. For instance, many

respondents were worried that money might be misused and also feared about a sudden rise in local food prices. “Even where markets are accessible, there were apprehensions, such as a fear that traders might raise prices if PDS is closed. Similarly, the local bank was often said to be too far, overcrowded or difficult to handle,” Prof. Dreze added. The Belgium-born professor of economics at Allahabad University also stated, “Many respondents had a bitter experience of the banking system in the context of NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) wage payments.” The survey was conducted in 106 villages spread over nine states: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. The draft bill seeks to provide a legal entitlement to subsidised foodgrains to 75 per cent of the country’s rural population and 50 per cent of urban India. Keywords: National Food Security Act, Food Security Bill, Jean Dreze (The Hindu 2/10/11)

Plan panel may change BPL figure, says Ambika Soni (21) NEW DELHI: Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia is expected to clarify the panel's stand on the Rs 32 per capita per day definition of the poverty line on Monday, an indication of which was given by information and broadcasting minister Ambika Soni. "The Planning Commission had given an affidavit. When we asked for information from the panel regarding it, we were told that it is an initial document and not the final document. These figures could undergo a change, who knows some other statistics may come up, which is acceptable to the Planning Commission," Soni said on Saturday. "There is concern among people. There is a certain disquiet in the civil society and some sections. They believe the statistics are perhaps somewhat removed from reality." As per the Commission's affidavit in Supreme Court, a family of five spending less than Rs 4,824 (at June, 2011, prices) in urban areas will fall in the BPL (below poverty line) category. The expenditure limit for a family in rural areas has been fixed at Rs 3,905. The number of poor entitled to BPL benefits, as per the affidavit, has been estimated at 40.74 crore, as against 37.2 crore estimated at the time of accepting the Tendulkar Committee report. Officials in the Planning Commission have said that providing benefits to more persons would defeat the purpose of the anti-poverty programme. Among others, Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander, members of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council, challenged the poverty line definition of the Commission and demanded that Ahluwalia withdraw the affidavit or resign. Ridiculing the poverty line, NAC member N C Saxena said, "On Rs 32 a day, you know only dogs and animals can live. People who are spending below Rs 32 (a day)... They are poorest of the poor." (Times of India 3/10/11)

HC seeks report on starvation cases in Raichur dist rict (21) BANGALORE: Rebuking the government and the political set-up for apathy towards malnutrition and starvation in Devadurga taluk of Raichur district, the high court has sought a report from the deputy commissioner and women and child development department by October 12. The vacation division bench headed by Justice N Kumar on Tuesday directed the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority to submit a report after conducting investigation. The court was hearing a PIL based on a letter written by Vimochana Sangha, an NGO. ''If what they have said in the report (4,531 suffering children) is true, then the question arises if there is any administration in the district at all. In the adjoining district of Koppal, ministers and opposition leaders had camped for more than ten days in connection with a byelection. In other words, none of these leaders, who have occupied their positions based on the votes of these innocent people, failed to take notice of starvation cases, let alone take remedial steps. Though the government and the political set-up have closed their eyes, the courts cannot be silent spectators,'' the bench observed. (Times of India 5/10/11)

70 pc of rural families are hungry in Bihar (21) Patna: Around seventy per cent of rural households in Bihar are routinely forced to skip meals due to high levels of poverty, a new study has revealed. The study by the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi was conducted to assess the effectiveness of the country's largest welfare scheme, the Public Distribution System (PDS), which aims to target the poor by providing basic food and non-food items at below market prices. "The level of hunger is quite appalling in Bihar as compared to other Indian states," said development economist Jean Dreze, who led the study which looked at nine states in the country. "Seventy per cent of the total rural populace interviewed told us they had gone to beds with empty stomach several times in the past," Dreze told journalists over the weekend. Dreze said villagers in other states spoke of hunger levels - 7 per cent in Uttar Pradesh; 16 per cent in Andhra Pradesh; 17 per cent in Chhattisgarh, 9 per cent in Orissa; 26 per cent in Jharkhand; 36 per cent in Rajasthan, but the figures

were alarmingly high in Bihar. India enjoys economic growth of around 8 per cent a year, has its own space programme and plans to spend $50 billion to modernise its military over the next five years. But despite being Asia's third largest economy, India has around 400 million people who live below the poverty line. Many people, in states like Bihar, are plagued with poverty and chronic food insecurity, further exacerbated by disasters such as floods, which annually destroy large swathes of farmland, displacing hundreds of thousands. Dreze said 1,200 poor families were interviewed, many of whom said they had not eaten pulses, fruits, eggs or meat for several weeks. The PDS, which is supposed to deliver cheap foods to poor rural homes, also has its flaws, according to the study, which revealed that less than half the food grains - about 45 per cent - meant for the poor was actually getting to them. Under the PDS, federal authorities buy food grains directly from farmers and then allocate it to state governments, which are responsible for selling it to poor families through a network of shops throughout the country. But there is widespread corruption and the food is often either siphoned off by various operators, from officials to truck drivers and shopkeepers and sold on the black market or left to rot in warehouses due to poor management. (CNN IBN 5/10/11)

How does one define poverty line in India? (21) The Planning Commission's new official poverty line — remarkably low at Rs 32 — could have moved millions out of poverty: on paper. The Commission is busy quibbling about the details of defining a poverty line amid a welter of protests from social activists who are accusing it of abdicating its responsibility. The million dollar question, or, if you will, the Rs 32 question, is: How does one define the poverty line in India, in which old yardsticks may not hold good, either in terms of the food that money can buy or in terms of defining who the poor are. Do these statistics accurately measure what poverty is, and what is the next step in poverty reduction for middle-income countries like India? One the primary uses of the poverty estimates is to provide subsidised entitlements to the poor. And by keeping the poverty line low, is the government denying that India continues to remain a very poor country despite being the world's second fastest growing major economy? It is difficult to argue that at a family of five members with an income of Rs 4,800 is poor and another one with an income of Rs 5,000 is not. “In reality if the first family lives near the place of work and the second one far from it, the second may be poorer than the first one. Even with a calorie intake norm, it would be difficult to make individual comparison,” said Kirit Parikh chairman, Integrated Research and Action for Development and former plan panel member. Had the government gone by 1979 poverty estimation methodology based on expenditure for buying food worth 2,400 calories in rural areas and 2,100 calories in urban areas, the present poverty line figure would had been R36 for rural areas and R60 for urban areas. And, it would have meant that more than 50% of Indians were poor as against the present Pan Panel figure of 37.5 %. “The poverty has to be measured on nutrition,” said National Advisory Council member NC Saxena, whose recommendation that 50 % of Indians should be declared poor was not accepted by the government. The Planning Commission accepted the Suresh Tendulkar Committee’s recommendation of calculating poverty. That went by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) norm that 1,700 calories were enough for one to sustain. The committee's findings when indexed with inflation for June 2011 showed abysmally low monthly per capita spending on food of 18 for urban areas and R16 for rural areas. Add the daily expenditure on non-food items were added to this, the poverty line stands at R32 for urban and R26 for rural areas respectively. “It (poverty line) has been worked on the premise that per head energy and protein intake was falling, which is not true,” said Utsa Patnaik, former professor of economics at the JNU. “We went by the globally acceptable FAO norms and surveys showing falling intake of cereals,” Abhijit Sen, a member of the Tendulkar Committee, explained. (The Hindustan Times 6/10/11)

Rs 32 per day poverty line not ridiculous: Montek ( 21) New Delhi: Amid raging controversy over Rs 32 per capita per day poverty line, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has said "it is not all that ridiculous" in Indian conditions. "The fact is that Rs 4,824 per month for a family (of five persons) to define poverty is not comfortable but it is not all that ridiculous from Indian conditions," Ahluwalia said in a letter to Attorney General Goolam Vahanvati. Vahanvati has agreed to appear in Supreme Court on behalf of the Planning Commission in connection with the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by the Right to Food Campaign. The Planning Commission has drawn flak from several quarters, including civil society for pegging poverty in urban areas at Rs 32 per capita per day. The figure in rural area is Rs 26 a day. Referring to the criticism on

poverty line, he said, "Social activists have vociferously criticised the latest poverty line of Rs 3,905 for rural areas and Rs 4,824 in urban areas as 'cruel joke' by converting the figure into per person per day i.e. Rs 26 and Rs 32 respectively. "Many people are persuaded by this because they sometimes think of daily allowance as meant for family budget...it does not need to be emphasised that the poverty line is not a comfort line of acceptable living for the aam aadmi (common man). It is poverty line which by definition implies considerable stress." On states' criticism that Planning Commission is understating poverty, leaving out deserving individuals, Ahluwalia explained, "The fact is that states gave many more below poverty line (BPL) cards than their entitlement and what is worse is, they often did not give the cards to deserving people." (CNN-IBN 12/10/11)

Every eighth urban child in India lives in slum: re port (21) Mumbai: Every eighth urban child in India in the age-group of 0-6 years stays in slums, according to ‘Slums in India – A statistical compendium 2011' published by the Union government. “... about 7.6 million children are living in slums in India and they constitute 13.1 per cent of the total child population of the urban areas of the 26 States/ Union Territories reporting slums,” the report compiled by the National Buildings Organisation (NBO) of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation says. More than 20 per cent of Chandigarh's children are in slums. According to the data, Maharashtra has the highest slum child population with around 1.7 million children (between 0-6 years) staying in slums. But Chandigarh has the highest proportion of slum child population. After Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh has the second highest slum child population of around 0.97 million. It is followed by Andhra Pradesh (0.83 million), Madhya Pradesh (0.6 million), West Bengal (0.53 million) and Tamil Nadu (0.51 million). In Chandigarh, a whopping 20.9 per cent proportion of the 0-6 age group population stays in slums. The picture is dismal in case of at least 23 States, where more than 10 per cent of the child population stays in slums. In fact, in 11 of these 23 States, the proportion of slum child population is more than 15 per cent. This includes the ‘much applauded for development' state of Gujarat, along with other States like Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Goa. Even in progressive States like Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, more than 10 per cent of the child population stays in slums. The other States, where the proportion is more than 10 per cent are: Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Karnataka, Meghalaya, Orissa, Punjab, Tripura, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir. The picture is no better in the million plus cities of the country. “Around 2.5 million children in the age group of 0-6 are living in the slum areas of million plus cities in 2001; this constitutes 27.3 per cent of the total child population of these 27 cities,” the report stated. Half of these 2.5 million children stay in the three major metros of Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. While Mumbai has 0.86 million children, Delhi and Kolkata account for 0.3 million and 0.15 million children respectively. “The child sex ratio at 921, in the slum areas of 26 States/Union Territories, where slum population has been reported, is higher than 903, recorded for non-slum urban areas of these States and Union Territories,” the report said. The highest child sex ratio in this age group is 988 and it has been observed in the slums of Puducherry. It is closely followed by Meghalaya (986) and Andaman and Nicobar Islands (965). In fact, even in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhatisgarh, Karnataka, Kerala, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Andaman and Nicobar, the child sex ratio in slums is above 943. Generally, 943 is a figure which is regarded as average natural sex ratio at birth. The ratio stands lowest in Punjab at 822. But the report indicates that it is still much better than the ratio in the non-slum population of Punjab, which is 790. “This is the first time that this data has been produced so comprehensively anywhere in this format,” D.S. Negi, NBO Director, told The Hindu from New Delhi. He said that the data published in the 2001 Census was not representational and needed lot of work on it. “The 2001 Census had data of only 654 towns and cities in India. It was not representational. Then we asked them to collect data from more cities and towns. This way, the Registrar General and the Census Commissioner collected data for a total of 1743 cities and towns,” he said. “But there were lot of anomalies in that data as well. For example, it said that the proportion of slums in Patna was 0.3 per cent, whereas it is much more than that. Many States approached the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation for fresh estimation of slum population in their urban areas,” Mr Negi said. Thus, he said, a high-power committee was appointed by the Ministry headed by Pranob Sen, the then Chief Statistician of India. “The committee did factual modelling and came up with this data which was near to reality for the 3,000 and odd remaining cities and towns,” he said. The recent 2011 Census was done on the basis of the recommendations given by the committee in its report, he added. (The Hindu 15/10/11)

Indians' average wealth triples in last 10 years: C redit Suisse report (21) NEW DELHI: India may be home to a large number of poor, but the average wealth of an Indian has nearly tripled in the last 10 years to USD 5,500 (nearly Rs 2.70 lakh), making the country the sixth largest contributer to overall global wealth, a study said today. Still, the average wealth for Indians was way below the global average of USD 51,000 and just about one per cent of the world's highest per-adult wealth of USD 5,40,010 recorded in Switzerland, found a global wealth study by investment banking major Credit Suisse. The wealth per adult in India has increased from USD 2,000 in the year 2000 to USD 5,500 currently, but the wealth distribution remains very disproportionate and poverty was still rampant in the country, Credit Suisse said in its report. "While wealth has been rising strongly in India, and the ranks of the middle class and wealthy have been swelling, not everyone has shared in this growth and there is still a great deal of poverty," the report said. As per the study, 43 per cent of adults' wealth in India is below USD 1,000, as against the world average of 27 per cent. Also, a very small proportion of the Indian population (just 0.4 per cent) has net worth of over USD 100,000. The report said that the global wealth has grown by 14 per cent since January 2010 to USD 231 trillion as on June 2011, driven by strong contribution from emerging economies including India. India was the sixth largest contributor to the global wealth accumulation, while the US was the largest wealth generator in the world over the 18 month-period, adding USD 4.6 trillion to global wealth. Asia Pacific was the main contributor to the rise in global wealth during the period, with China, Japan, Australia and India among the top six contributors to global wealth accumulation. Based on Credit Suisse's June 2011 estimates, there are 84,700 ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) with net assets exceeding USD 50 million each globally. The USA is at the top of the ladder with 35,400 UHNWIs, followed by China with 5,400 UHNWIs, Germany (4,135), Switzerland (3,820) and Japan (3,400), Russia (1,970), India (1,840), and Brazil (1,520). In the year 2011 alone, India has acquired 34,000 new millionaires, however, a larger share of these wealthy individuals "may be more properly regarded as residents of other countries" the report said. (Times of India 19/10/11)

Rich-poor divide widens (21) Mumbai, Oct. 19: The gap between the super rich and the abject poor has never been so wide. At a time the Planning Commission has drawn the poverty line at Rs 32 a day in urban areas and Rs 28 in rural areas and put the number of people living below these peg marks at 400 million, a global wealth report by Credit Suisse says India has acquired 34,000 new millionaires. The ranks of the super rich in India — pegged at 204,000 in 2011 — are projected to grow 150 per cent to 510,000 by 2016. The Credit Suisse report says the country has been the sixth highest contributor to the growth of global wealth with an increase in total wealth by $1.3 trillion from January 2010 to June 2011. In 2011, India’s total wealth touched $4.1 trillion and is expected to double to $8.9 trillion in the next five years, which is roughly equivalent to the growth the US witnessed over 30 years between 1916 and 1946. The dramatic wealth disparity, however, persists. The Credit Suisse research says 43 per cent of adults in India have wealth below $1,000 per adult. The world average is 27 per cent. Another figure that highlights the rich-poor divide is the fact that just 0.4 per cent of the adult population in India has wealth over $100,000 per adult. The bigger picture shows that Asia Pacific has emerged as the key contributor of global wealth growth, accounting for 36 per cent of all global wealth creation since 2000 and 54 per cent since January 2010, said the report. Total global wealth has increased 14 per cent from $203 trillion in January 2010 to $231 trillion in June 2011. Emerging markets dominated growth with Latin America, Africa and Asia steaming ahead. “A radical reconfiguration of the world’s economic order is taking shape. Emerging markets are important drivers for global recovery and remain the key growth engines of global wealth,” said Credit Suisse chief executive officer Asia Pacific Osama Abbasi. This study analysed wealth distribution of all the 4.5 billion adults in the world in more than 200 countries, using a rigorous and independent research approach, said a media release by Credit Suisse. (The Telegraph 20/10/11)

Maharashtra: Hunger kills 500 kids yearly in Melgha t (21) Mumbai: A CNN-IBN special report shows how, Maharashtra, one of India's high growth states, is also home to a district that is in the grip of malnutrition. Melghat in Amravti district in Maharashtra has been losing more than one child a day for the last 20 years to malnutrition. The government figures say 266 children have died in the last 4 months but these figures could be much higher. Pramila, a villager in Hira Bambai, is too numb to mourn. Her two-year-old daughter starved to death in September. She walked 14 kilometer to the closest primary health centre but her child was declared dead on arrival. A few huts away

from Pramila's house lives a disabled man, Sitaram, who is struggling to feed his family of five. His son Ritesh is six but is so malnourished and stunted that he looks no more than three. "I don't know what is wrong. He has become like a stick," Sitaram says. In September 2011, in reply to a PIL, the state told the Bombay High Court that 14,500 children in Melghat are malnourished and that 266 had died in the last 4 months. "Government for them (Melghat villagers) is a curse because you (government) don’t take care of their dignity," Sheela Barse, who had filed the PIL, says. At the health centre in Melghat the equipments lie unused as there is no one to man them. In fact, there is not a single special paediatrician in the entire district. Doctor Aashish Satav working in Melghat says, "Most of the schemes are on paper. They are not reaching the beneficiaries, like availability of the medicines." Interestingly, Melghat has 320 villages, but what's baffling is as an RTI reveals that there are 370 NGOs registered in the area. With the stated purpose of battling malnutrition come huge funds, big donors. But some activists point out that several among the NGOs are politicians. But the tragedy of Melghat isn't just the lack of healthcare. With large part of the region denied access to power or clean drinking water, these are India's forgotten children. (CNN IBN 21/10/11)

‘Poverty is a human rights violation' (21) NEW DELHI, October 26, 2011: Prof. Thomas Pogge of Yale University on Tuesday strongly advocated the need for global institutional reforms to eradicate poverty, ensure human rights and secure global justice. He suggested establishing a Health Impact Fund (HIF) to complement the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Prof. Pogge made these observations while delivering the First Dr. Arjun K. Sengupta Memorial Lecture at O. P. Jindal Global University in Sonepat near Delhi. Prof. Pogge said: “Today most human beings are unable to realise their human rights even though the fulfilment of human rights is directly connected to poverty.” Citing statistics of human rights violations, he expressed concern over the fact that roughly one-third of all human deaths – about 50,000 of them daily – “are due to poverty-related causes that are easily preventable through better nutrition, safe drinking water, vaccines and medicines”. He pointed out that severe poverty and the massive burden of disease must be seen as human rights violations when they are the foreseeable effects of active conduct by human agents, an effect these agents could avoid without undue hardship. He was of the view that powerful countries, corporations and citizens have violated the human rights of the global poor when, for the sake of minor gains, they did things that aggravated severe poverty and disease. Prof. Pogge said the regulation of trade through protectionist barriers, intellectual property, profit-and-loss reporting, banking deposits, labour standards, sovereign borrowing, resource exports, and international trade in arms contribute to poverty. Spelling out details of the Health Impact Fund, Prof. Pogge said innovators can voluntarily register any new medicine with the HIF. (The Hindu 26/10/11)

UPA readies food security draft in line with Congre ss priorities (21) NEW DELHI: The UPA is pressing ahead with the National Food Security Bill for the Cabinet despite agriculture minister Sharad Pawar's public criticism of UPA's flagship programme. The first draft, which was put up for public consultation including inputs from state governments, is being revised to reflect the political priorities of the Congress. Even as the government gives final shape to the bill it will take to the Cabinet, the debate within the government on the spread of the beneficiary net is now embroiled in controversy with the Planning Commission affidavit before the Supreme Court. The Planning Commission's affidavit in the apex court laying down the poverty line had stirred a controversy and embarrassed the UPA. Though the Planning Commission and rural development ministry sought to bring out a compromise joint public statement, the government has been unable to decide if it will also file a corrective affidavit in the court. Sources in the government said the plan panel continued to be a divided house on the issue. The courts had asked why the government used the poverty line figures as an artificial cap on the number of beneficiaries for government programmes. But, sources said, the bill is expected to be closer to the recommendations of the National Advisory Council than the first draft which had drawn large protests from the Right to Food campaign as well as some council members. Besides the public distribution system, the council had also recommended turning existing government programmes into legal rights for beneficiaries, including the Integrated Child Development Scheme, the Mid-day Meal programme and pension and cash benefit schemes for mothers. They had also recommended a default inclusion of vulnerable sections into the beneficiary list besides running special nutrition programmes for specific sections. The original government bill had not included many of these recommendations but the final draft is expected to be more accommodative. (Times of India 26/10/11)

Poverty a reality but India deserve F1: Mallya (21) NOIDA (India): Force India co-owner Vijay Mallya on Friday fiercely defended India's right to host a Formula One Grand prix race, saying the country's economic growth was as much a reality as its poverty. Critics have flayed this weekend's inaugural Indian Grand Prix as an instance of misplaced priority in the world's second most populous nation with an abysmal malnutrition rate and skewed economic growth. According to Mallya, that does not mean India should not host events such as the one being held on the $450 million Buddh International Circuit on the outskirts of Delhi. "In every country, there are the privileged and the under-privileged. We have under-privileged people in our country, but that does not mean the country must be bogged down or weighed down," Mallya told reporters. "India is a progressive country, we have a strongly growing economy, a large economy. The government is doing all it can to address the need of the poor or the under-privileged people, but India must move on. "The (2010) Commonwealth Games were held in India and now it's Formula One. I'm sure there will be several more global events in our country because this is a world class country in many ways." For now, Mallya would rather cherish the fulfillment of a long-held dream. "It's something I have dreamed of for over 30 years and this weekend will be a very emotional one for me. "We have had an Indian team since 2008 on the Formula One grid and now a grand prix here. This is unbelievable - fantastic." Race organisers endured early embarrassment on Friday when a stray dog red-flagged the morning practice session. It, however, could not shake the belief of the local drivers that the event has made the right start. "We had dogs in Turkey, Brazil... it's nothing new. It's one of those things you know," Team Lotus's Indian reserve Karun Chandhok said. "It was a great first day show and (promoters) Jaypee (Sports International) can be proud of it. I'm coming from the drivers' briefing and they are absolutely delighted with the circuit. Nobody had anything bad to say." HRT's Narain Karthikeyan, who will be the lone local driver competing in Sunday's race, echoed the view. "It's not ideal, of course, but we have got our own unique teething problems in India. Things would get better next year," he said. (Times of India 29/10/11)

Andhra's rice scheme to benefit 75 mn people (21) Hyderabad, Nov 1 : Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy Tuesday launched Re.1 a kg rice scheme, which will benefit 75 million people out of the state's 84 million population. According to the state's civil supplies department, 22.6 million below poverty line (BPL) families would get rice at a token one rupee a kg instead of the present Rs.2. In a state where the total number of poor is estimated to be more than the state's population due to a very large number of bogus ration cards, the scheme is seen as another populist measure by the chief minister. The chief minister launched the scheme in Khairatabad locality of the state capital on the 56th formation day of the state, saying it was aimed at providing food security to the poor. Andhra Pradesh has joined Tamil Nadu and Kerala in implementing this scheme for the poor. Civil Supplies Minister D.Sridhar Babu said under the scheme each family would get 20 kg rice every month. The BPL families would be supplied 330,000 tonnes of subsidised rice through the public distribution system every month. The state would provide annual subsidy of Rs.26 billion for the scheme. This includes Rs.20 billion being provided for the existing Rs.2 a kg rice scheme. The officials confirmed to IANS that the scheme would benefit 75 million people. However, if a BPL family comprises an average of four people, the number of poor from 22.6 million BPL families works out to over 90 million, more than the number of the state's actual population estimated at 84.7 million according to 2011 Census. According to the official statistics, the state has 20 million white or BPL ration cards, issued to families with an annual income not exceeding Rs.75,000 in urban and Rs.60,000 in rural areas. The chief minister promised another 3.1 million ration cards during `Racchabanda'. While 600,000 cards were promised during the first phase of the mass contact programme, another 2.5 million cards will be issued during the second phase beginning Nov 2. While admitting the fact of a large number of bogus ration cards, the officials of civil supplies department hope that they would be eliminated once Aadhaar cards are issued to all families. The state plans to make Aadhaar compulsory for availing the benefits under all the welfare schemes. The state has a very large number of ration cards. A few weeks before his death in a helicopter crash in 2009, chief minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy himself had admitted that there were cards in the names of non-existing families while many eligible families do not have them. Analysts say many bogus white ration cards were secured to avail benefits under other welfare schemes launched by YSR, including old age pension, housing and free healthcare. During a drive to identify bogus ration cards in 2009, officials were appalled to find a ration card in the name of tennis star Sania Mirza. The card issued in Vizianagaram district had the name of a 20-year-old man as her husband. Analysts point out that

without taking up a drive to eliminate bogus ration cards, Kiran Kumar Reddy announced Re.1 a kg rice scheme. "Like his predecessors, he too wants to win popularity by launching rice scheme," a political analyst told IANS. "By doing this, he is also trying to divert public attention from the problems he faces in Telangana," de said, declining to be named. It was Telugu Desam Party (TDP) founder N.T. Rama Rao who had introduced Rs.2 a kg rice in Andhra Pradesh after coming to power in 1983. His son-in-law N. Chandrababu Naidu, who dislodged him from power in 1995, discontinued the scheme. Rajasekhara Reddy re-introduced the scheme in 2008. (New Kerala 1/11/11)

Nutrition mission gains pace after adverse report ( 21) GANDHINAGAR: The Gujarat government has decided to expedite the process of providing Gujarat Nutrition Mission a separate structure. This after the India Human Development Report (HDR) 2011 indicted the state for faring "worst in terms of overall hunger and malnutrition" among industrial high per capita income states. A top Sachivalaya official complained, "Modi had signed the file for transferring the formation of the mission from woman and child to health department in February 2011, yet nothing happened due to administrative lethargy." "The health department has submitted a new note for defining the role of the mission to the government, including the type of administrative structure it should have. The note also says whether it should play the role of a coordinator with different departments, and whether the mission should operate as an independent agency with a separate budget. We are hopeful that, in the light of the latest HDR report, the government will clear the proposal for the mission by this month-end." Gujarat's poor showing on nutrition front was first identified by former principal secretary, woman and child development, J S Rana, way back in February 2007 during a Budget Chintan Shibir presided over by Modi. Rana, who was forced to resign from the IAS for independent views, told a stunned Modi and babus with a presentation that more than half of the state's children suffered from malnutrition. "Vibrant Gujarat investment summits are all right, but we must recognize this lag," he had declared. Officials admit, several steps were taken by Gujarat government later to fight malnutrition, such as providing fortified wheat flour and vitamin-added sweets (sukhdis) and toffees to children, but these proved to be cosmetic. Even now, the government takes isolated measures. The effort to fight malnutrition among children is even today a pilot project with nutrition centres working in 73 villages, where nutritious food is being provided to undernourished children for a fortnight, with little followup. The Chintan Shibir in February 2011 at Mehsana discussed nutrition as the most important issue nagging the state. A document, distributed at the shibir, said vegetarianism a reason for "higher anemia prevalence rate" in Gujarat. Ten interventions proposed for nutrition mission, Initiation of breastfeeding within one hour of birth, Exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months of life, Timely introduction of complementary foods at six months, Age-appropriated foods for children six months to two years, Hygienic complementary feeding practices, Immunization & bi-annual vitamin A supplementation with de-worming, Appropriate feeding for children during and after illness, Therapeutic feeding for children with severe acute malnutrition, Adequate nutrition & support for adolescent girls to prevent anemia, Adequate nutrition & support for pregnant & breastfeeding mothers (Times of India 2/11/11)

Women, poor worse off in India than in Pak (8) New Delhi, November 03, 2011: Despite its high economic growth, India has been ranked lower than its neighbours, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, on multi-dimensional poverty index (MPI) and gender inequality index (GII) by the United Nations Development Programme. The global Human Development Report released on Wednesday, however, ranks India 134 among 187 countries, higher than Pakistan but lower than Sri Lanka in the human development index (HDI). Norway is top and Congo bottom of the index that measures healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living. The cost of living is rising rapidly in India due to high inflation and this is making life unbearable for many families. How do you expect someone to send their kids to a good school when they are struggling to make ends meet! This is not just a isolated case but it's happening in every part of India (especially in rural areas, where majority of our people reside). All this is leading to a huge gap between the have and have nots which is leading to inequality. Inequality creates hopelessness, lack of perceived opportunity which can lead to frustration and violence. It is impossible for everyone in an economy to be well off but there should be a good system in place that provides equal opportunities (employment opportunities, education etc) to every citizen in their country. One of the main reasons why western countries have made so much progress is because they have a good system in place for everything, they provide equal opportunities to everyone, inequality does exist but it is not bad as in developing nations. The growing inequality between the rich

and poor will need to be reduced otherwise future wars will not only be fought for the control of resources but also to remove inequality. (The Hindustan Times 3/11/11)

India ranks 134 in human index (21) New Delhi: The United Nations’s Human Development Report 2011 — Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All — has come down sharply on the widening income gap between rich and poor with huge amounts of wealth presently concentrated in the hands of the rich. It cited the examples of China, India and South Africa as examples of this trend with, 41 per cent of China’s total income in 2008 concentrated amongst a “top quintile of income earners.” India’s overall ranking in the Human Development Index(HDI) is a low 134 among 167 countries. The HDI assesses long term progress in health, education and income indicators and India is even trailing war-torn Iraq. The report has introduced a Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) for 109 countries highlighting the entire issue of environmental deprivation amongst the poor with India having the ignominy of having the largest number of MPI in the world. The report states that more than half of India’s population of 612 million fall in this category. The report warns that sharp income growth has seen a parallel deterioration in key environmental indicators including carbon dioxide emissions, soil and water quality and forest cover. The environmental fall out can be gauged from the fact that global temperatures now average 0.75 ºC higher than at the beginning of the 20th century while global carbon dioxide emissions have increased 248 per cent. Drivers of this increase are population growth, rising consumption levels and carbon-intensive production. As the world community prepares for the landmark UN conference on sustainable development next year, the report warns that disadvantaged people are carry the double burden of deprivation since they are vulnerable to the wider affects of environmental degradation and also to immediate environment threats posed by indoor air pollution, dirty water and bad sanitation. It also highlights that environmental deterioration is taking place even while the poor are working hard to narrow the health and education gap between the rich and poor. The report has also updated the Gender Inequality Index (GII) for 145 countries which highlights how reproductive health constraints continue to contribute to gender inequality. India does not fare well in the GII in comparison to neighbouring countries including Thailand and Sri Lanka where reproductive healthcare and contraceptives are readily available helping to reduce fertility rates. Even in Bangladesh, fertility rates have plunged from 6.6 births per woman in 1975 to 2.4 in 2009. Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh are ranked 97,145 and 146 respectively (Asian Age 3/11/11)

Pak better than India on poverty (21) New Delhi, November 02, 2011: India has been ranked lower than its neighbour Pakistan in the United Nation’s multi-dimensional poverty index (MDI) and gender equality index even though it has been able to maintain its 134 rank in overall Human Development Index (HDI). The MDI evaluates deprivations in education, health and standard of living and the households with score of more than one-third of the weighted indicators are listed as multi-dimensionally poor. The UN Development Programme’s HDI report says that 53.7% of Indians suffer from multi-dimensional poverty as compared to 49.4 % in Pakistan and 57.8% in Bangladesh. Even in absolute poverty terms, measured for those earning less than $1.25 a day, Pakistan fares better than India. Around 41.6% of Indians in 2005 were earning less than $1.25 a day as compared to 22.6% Pakistanis. When it comes to gender equality, India has been ranked lower than most of its neighbouring countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. It is primarily on account of India’s adolescent fertility rate, lesser number of women in Parliament and poor participation of women in workforce.Releasing the report --- Sustainability and Equity : Better Future for All --- Rural Development minister Jairam Ramesh said that not just inequality between nations but also inequalities within nations was very important. He highlighted the finding of recent India Human Development Report, which said that Gujarat despite high economic growth had large deprived population of backwards and Kerala with low economic growth had lesser inequality. “Economic development does not guarantee human development. A more disturbing fact is that actually economic development may lead to retrogation of social indices," he said. India has been placed at ‘medium’ level of human development with ranking of 134 out of 187 countries on HDI even though its neighbours like Pakistan and Bangladesh have been ranked in 'low' category with positions of 145 and 146, respectively. In the last report, India had been ranked at 119 out of 169 countries. But the new report for 2011 says it would be misleading to compare values and rankings with those of previously published reports, because the underlying data and methods have changed, as well as the number of countries included in the Human Development Index. The report also showcases India’s human development with life expectancy increasing from 55.3 years in

1980 to 65.6 in 2011 and expected years of schooling increasing from 6.5 years to 10.3 years. India’s gross national income has also increased from $896 to $3,468 during the same period. (The Hindustan Times 3/11/11)

National Food Security Act set for pre-poll rollout (21) NEW DELHI: The National Food Security Act shall be rolled out starting next financial year spread in phases running up to the parliamentary elections, in what could be an attempt to do the loan-waiver trick in 2014. The government has finalized the bill bringing it substantially closer to the National Advisory Council recommendations. The government has resolved most of the issues that had been in contradiction with the NAC advice and intends to finalize and table the bill in the winter session. The existing Integrated Child Development Scheme and the midday meal programme would become entitlements for beneficiaries under the proposed Act. The government has also decided to go midway in meeting NAC's recommendation on provisions under the public distribution system. The Sonia Gandhi-led panel had suggested that the general category (what is today called 'above poverty line' beneficiaries) should get 20 kg of grain as compared to the 35 provided to the priority category. The first government draft had instead recommended 3 kg per individual (assuming 5 people per family). The government proposes to up this linking it to procurement and production. The government intends to make a budgetary provision for the bill in the next financial year preparing for the roll out the flagship scheme UPA is banking upon to provide political dividend in 2014 elections. The government has not yet been able to settle the debate on the identification of priority beneficiaries. It has moved away from putting an artificial cap based on poverty figures emerging from Planning Commission. Instead it is going to depend upon Socio-Economic Caste Census to draw up the numbers. Besides categories for automatic inclusion and exclusion of individuals in to the below poverty line list, the census uses eight depravity criteria to assign the surveyed in or out of the BPL list. The government is yet to decide whether it will choose people with three or less depravity points as beneficiary of the FSA. The choice could alter the total number of beneficiaries substantially and impact the subsidy bill considerably.The issue of a grievance redress mechanism also remains unresolved as yet. With a separate grievance redress bill being prepared it remains unclear if the government would keep a separate provision for a similar mechanism under the food bill as well or not. The NAC had recommended an elaborate and decentralized mechanism within the food security bill but in its first draft, this had been diluted against such advice. The provisions for pensions, which exist as a scheme at present, the government is likely to keep more as a directive principle in the act rather than a clear entitlement. (Times of India 9/11/11)

UN chief seeks investment for reducing poverty (21) United Nations, Nov 11 : UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has stressed the need to ensure that the world's most vulnerable people are not neglected and highlighted the importance of investing in poverty reduction. The UN chief yesterday briefed the GeneralAssembly on the outcome of the recent Group of 20 meeting, which includes India. "I asked the G-20 leaders to seriously consider the options before them for innovative financing for development to supplement official development assistance [ODA]," he noted, saying that the meeting in Cannes, France, was dominated by concerns over Greece’s financial difficulties and the threat the crisis posed to other eurozone economies. Mr Ban added, "And I expressed concern both-to the G-20 and at the L-20 meeting of labour union representatives-about the need to put as many people as possible, as fast as possible, back to work. I emphasized that the United Nations will continue to broker multi-stakeholder partnerships to achieve our common development goals." He said the G-20 gathering made progress on different fronts, including the setting up of the Agricultural Market Information System to be hosted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and on ensuring that humanitarian food purchases by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) do not face export restrictions or extraordinary taxes. The G-20 leaders put forward a "welcome" initiative to build on the work of his High-level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing, Mr Ban said, adding that he had emphasized in the leaders’ declaration that the UN will work with other international financial institutions to achieve that objective. "A key immediate challenge is to get a scaled-up climate finance system up and running. I called on the G-20 countries to ensure that disagreements on the design of the new Green Climate Fund are resolved before COP17 [UN Conference on Climate Change] in Durban, so it can be launched." He informed the Assembly that, in close consultation with President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, which will host the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), they had decided to change

the date of the conference from June 4-6 next year to June 20-22 to facilitate the participation of leaders after the G-20 summit in Mexico on June 18-19. (New Kerala 12/11/11)

MP: Increase in hunger deaths among infants (21) Shivpuri: The government in Madhya Pradesh is finding itself helpless against the tragedy of hunger deaths among tribal children. Hundreds of tons of foodgrain was allowed to rot in the state thanks to government apathy. That grain could have saved many children's lives. CNN-IBN met one such child in Shivpuri district, 4-year-old Deepu. For months now, he has been too weak, and too ill to respond to his parents. His parents say all they can do now is watch him die. Jabru, Deepu's father, said, "The main problem is that we do not know what to do. I do not know what the government is doing? I'm a labourer, how would I know." The Saharia tribals do have Antyodaya cards which should give them access to cheap foodgrains. But they are unaware of their rights. Deepu is not the only malnourished child who needs immediate government attention. There are hundreds like him who are dying a slow death and surprisingly the Nutritional Rehab Centre that has been set up the government with UNICEF's assistance is just two km from Shivpuri and is half empty. CNN-IBN went with Deepu to the Nutritional Rehab Centre, but the authorities there seemed helpless. In Shivpuri district, the local Saharia tribals are the worst hit by malnutrition. Shivpuri Collector John Kingsley said, "One of the reasons is people's non willingness to approach the system. But we are proactive. The government has made a policy to issue the Antyodaya cards to every notified tribal in this district but still the problem exists, I accept it." In Bhankri village, Umeda has no time to mourn. Gudda, her third child, died just days ago. She told us how the 7-month-old just wasted away. Umeda, victim's mother, said, "He did not eat anything for a long time. He refused to eat. I would have certainly taken him if he ate something but he did not eat." Child starvation deaths are chronic in Madhya Pradesh, but the government is in denial. The 2010 health survey says there were 1 lakh 8 thousand infant deaths in the state, but the government insists the figure was 23,000. (CNN-IBN 14/11/11)

PM calls innovation game-changer (21) New Delhi, November 15, 2011: Describing innovation as "a game-changer", Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday called for devising a model that benefits not only the rich but also poor people through poverty eradication, development of agriculture and green energy. "Innovation has a critical role to play in India's socio-economic processes and development," Manmohan Singh said after releasing here the first report of the National Innovation Council set up last year. He also launched a portal that will serve as an information repository for innovation in the country. It's only through creativity and innovation, solutions that are appropriate to India's conditions, that we can achieve development, the prime minister said. Innovation is truly a game-changer, Manmohan Singh said while adding that it will enable the country to move from "incremental change to radical change".The National Innovation Council was set up by Manmohan Singh in 2010 under the chairmanship of Sam Pitroda to discuss, analyse and help implement strategies for inclusive innovation in India and prepare a roadmap for 2010-2020, which has been designated as the decade of innovation. Alluding to innovative advances made in areas like space technology, atomic energy and automobiles, the prime minister pointed out the need for parity, saying innovations so far have tended to benefit largely upper income groups and therefore the focus should be on benefiting ordinary people. Describing India's freedom struggle as "a social innovation in peaceful resistance", Manmohan Singh stressed on creating "an enabling environment for innovations to flourish". (The Hindustan Times 15/11/11)

Eight MLAs to visit MP village to seek tips on anem ia control (21) JAIPUR: Lessons learnt from Madhya Pradesh will now help Sahariya tribals of the state to reduce prevalence of anemia among the community. A team of at least eight MLAs from the state will be visiting villages in Madhya Pradesh later this month for aping a model of a village-level wheat flour fortification which will help fight anemia. The team would be led by chairperson of the assembly's Women and Children Welfare Committee Chandrakanta Vyas and will include Anita Singh, Ganga Devi, Kamala Meghwal, Anita Bhadel, Promila Kundera and Gangaben Garasiya. According to sources, the legislators would be visiting Guna district in Madhya Pradesh for understanding the way the fortification model is being carried out there. Later, the MLAs would also be having an interaction with their counterparts there on the issue of hunger and malnutrition. On their return to the state, they would be making a presentation of the same in the assembly here so that the model can be replicated here through support from the MLA

funds in the tribal belts of the state. The visit is being sponsored by the United National Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) cluster on Hunger and Malnutrition, a joint group of World Food Programme (WFP), Unicef, FAO and WHO with an objective of reducing the prevalence of anemia and increasing low life expectancy amongst the Sahariya tribal community by creating a replicable model of village-level wheat flour fortification. "The objective is to sensitize the legislators on the issues of hunger and malnutrition and its overall impact on societal development and enlist their support through small do-able actions at their level towards reduction of hunger and malnutrition in Rajasthan ," a source said. (Times of India 16/11/11)

For urban poor, Govt plans to stand guarantee for R s 5-lakh home loans (21) New Delhi: The Government is finalising the blueprint for a scheme to enable a vast majority of the urban poor to own a house. The housing and urban poverty alleviation (HUPA) ministry has proposed to stand in as guarantor for home loans up to Rs 5 lakh. Under the scheme, banks would be reimbursed up to 90 per cent in case the poor default on these loans. The scheme, targeting those earning less than Rs 10,000 per month in cities, envisages setting up of a credit guarantee fund which will re-imburse banks in case of default. “The move will enable security guards, drivers and domestic servants to own a house,” a senior HUPA official told The Indian Express. The ministry’s surveys have found that the average cost of owning a house in metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Chennai works out to Rs 5 lakh, going up to Rs 7 lakh. According to the proposed scheme, the government will re-imburse 90 per cent of the loan amount for loans up to Rs 2 lakh and 85 per cent in case of loans between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 5 lakh. “Banks are reluctant to extend credit to the economically weaker section (EWS) and low-income group (LIG). To allay their fears, the government will step in as the guarantor,” said the official. Besides the EWS and LIG criteria for eligibility, the size of the house has to match government specifications. For EWS applicants, loans will be extended for a house with a minimum area of 25 sq m and for those in the LIG category, at least 40 sq m as house area is the minimum eligibility. (The Financial Express 16/11/11)

Poverty survey to miss deadline (21) New Delhi, Nov. 17: A survey to identify the country’s poor looks set to miss its December 2011 deadline since it has not even started in 20-odd states, including Bengal. The “socio-economic caste census” is being conducted by the rural development ministry, urban housing and poverty alleviation ministry, and the registrar-general of India. One reason that a rural development ministry official cited for the delay is Bharat Electronics Limited’s failure to supply enough low-cost tablet computers for the conduct of the census. The ministry is consulting the department of defence production to see if it can provide such tablets. The other reason, the official said, is the states’ tardiness. “Some states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have said they will start the survey only after February. In that case, the deadline is most likely to be extended till May 2012,” the official said. The census was launched in Tripura on June 29 and is four-fifths complete in the state. As of today, the survey is on in 10 states and Union territories: Tripura, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Punjab, Chandigarh, Daman and Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. It’s over only in Puducherry and is to start in Bengal around the end of this month. The cabinet had approved the survey to find out the caste, religion and the economic level of each citizen. While the last caste census was carried out in 1931, the last below-poverty-line (BPL) census was undertaken in 2002. The current survey will rank people depending on the assets they have, the amenities they use and the deprivations they face. A committee will be set up to analyse the census data and suggest the criteria to identify who should benefit from the various government welfare programmes. Certain families are already ruled out: those that own assets such as mechanised farm equipment or motorised boats or vehicles, or have landline phones or Kisan credit cards with credit limit of Rs 50,000 or more. (The Telegraph 18/11/11)

Foodgrain productivity up 8 pc at 1,921 kg/hectare in 2010-11 (21) New Delhi: Foodgrain productivity rose by 8 per cent to 1,921 kg per hectare in 2010-11 crop year, Parliament was informed today. India's foodgrain productivity stood at 1,798 kg per hectare in the 2009-10 crop year (July-June), Minister of State for Agriculture Harish Rawat told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply. "The productivity of foodgrains has increased from 1,715 kg per hectare in 2005-06 to 1,798 kg per hectare in 2009-10 and further to 1,921 kg per hectare in 2010-11," Rawat said. The average annual growth in the agriculture and allied sectors during the first four years of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-08 to 2011-12) was 3.2 per cent as against the targeted rate of 4 per cent, he added. "The average growth in

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of agriculture and allied sectors suffered a setback due to severe drought in many parts of the country during 2009-10 and drought/deficient rainfall in some states namely Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand and East Uttar Pradesh in 2010-11," he said. However, the GDP growth for agriculture sector touched 6.6 per cent in 2010-11 -- the highest growth rate achieved in last six years --on account of the corrective actions taken by the government, the minister informed the house. Rawat also said that investments in the farm sector in the country have been increasing in the past five years. "The level of investment (Gross Capital Formation) in the agriculture sector has been increasing over the years from Rs 76,096 crore in 2004-05 to Rs 1,33,377 crore in 2009-10, he noted. This includes public sector investment from 16,187 crore in 2004-05 to Rs 23,635 crore in 2009-10 and private sector investment from Rs 59,909 crore to Rs 1,09,742 crore in the same period at 2004-05 prices, Rawat added. (The Financial Express 26/11/11)

Pass Right to Food Act, says Swaminathan (21) Agra, Nov 27: M.S. Swaminathan, the mentor of India's Green Revolution, Sunday called for an early passage of the Right to Food Act, saying it would be the "brightest jewel in the nation's crown". Swaminathan's recorded message was played at an international conference on sustainable environment and heritage here. He was to inaugurate but could not make the trip due to pressing engagement at the last minute. The Right to Food campaign aims at addressing the structural defects so as to overcome the problem of hunger in the country. Swaminathan said scientists must now engage in anticipatory research along with participatory and strategic research to provide solutions to future challenges like global warming. Modern science has provided us the tools and transformational technologies to minimise the negative impacts, he said. "We have to be prepared for droughts and floods. We need to develop sustainable agricultural growth." The government's policies were guided by the life-cycle approach, providing for legal support from conception to cremation, he said. Magsaysay Award winner Rajendra Singh, an eminent water conservationist, said in his key-note address that "the biggest corruption today is the transformation of rivers into drains and sewage canals". He said indigenous knowledge systems were being discarded and imported growth models transplanted, creating distortions. The urban-rural dichotomy was being perpetuated. "In the past 64 years after independence, eight times more area had come under drought and 10 times more area had come under floods. People and resources were being displaced inviting disasters," Rajendra Singh said. Governments should respect the peculiar geo-cultural diversity aimed at restoration and conservation of resources, he said. The conference is being attended by social and green activists, and experts from other fields, according to M. Asad Pathan, a former Indian Oil Corp chairman and now chairman of Tata Petrodyne Ltd. In her message, President Pratibha Patil said the conference provided an excellent opportunity for experts, policy makers, researchers, scientists, academics, engineers, architects, industrialists and concerned citizens to come together on one platform to discuss challenges and solutions towards making the concept of eco-villages and cities a practical reality. (New Kerala 27/11/11)

Poverty level raised to include 100 million Chinese (21) BEIJING, December 1, 2011: China has said it will almost double its definition of the poverty threshold to enable an additional 100 million people to access social subsidies, a move that comes as the government looks to address a fast-widening income gap. The government said this week it would raise the poverty threshold to 2,300 yuan ($362 or Rs.18,630) as the annual income for farmers — an 80-per cent increase from the 1,274 yuan defined last year. This brings China's poverty line to a little under a dollar a day, and closer to the $1.25 level defined by the World Bank. Under the earlier definition, China said it had 26.88 million rural poor, a fall of over 70 million during the past decade. The move to widen the definition — and the segment of the population entitled to a number of subsidies — to 128 million people, or 13.4 per cent of the population, was announced following a national meeting on poverty alleviation held on Tuesday. At the meeting, President Hu Jintao said China had made “extraordinary achievements” in reducing poverty but now faced a number of new challenges, including the environment and the widening wealth gap. To bridge the divide, a new social insurance programme will be put in place in rural areas and social security funding will be boosted, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was reported as saying on Wednesday by the state-run Xinhua news agency. China spent $ 35 billion on poverty reduction last year, said Xinhua, taking net spending on poverty alleviation over the past decade to more than $200 billion (The Hindu 1/12/11)

People still living in hunger in Odisha-Harsh Mande r (21) Bhubaneswar, Dec 2: Special Commissioner of Supreme Court on Food Security today expressed his dissatisfaction over the Odisha government's response to address the problem of malnutrition, starvation and hunger. Dr Mander told newspersons here that there were certain improvements in the administration system since the last review with regard to distribution of old age pension on a fixed day, Public Distribution System and stoppage of contract system in the ICDS programme, but many more steps are to be taken. He said people were still living in starvation, hunger and malnutrition and BPL cards had not reached many tribal primitive groups. Dr.Mander, who met state Chief Secretary B K Patnaik in his office here, said the state government should not be in a denial mode with regard to starvation deaths. ''We should not debate on starvation deaths but ensure that people do not live in a starvation situation. Dr Mander suggested the government keep the children of migrant families and labourers in residential schools, include all primitive groups under the Antodaya scheme and improve the midday meal scheme. Mr Patnaik said the state government was working as per the recommendations of the Commission. More focus was being given on food distributed through the Anganwadi centres. State Advisor to the Commissioner Raj Kishore Mishra said the death of a person at Sinhapalli in Nuapara district recently was due to want of food as found during an inquiry conducted by a team four days back. Mr Mishra said the family comprising of 12 members was not provided rice and wheat under PDS for the last five months. Though it could not be termed a starvation death, they were half fed and living in hunger. The Chief Secretary, he said, had assured them to ensure that such incidents would not recur. Mr.Patnaik said an inquiry was conducted and disciplinary action taken against erring officials.He complained that despite the request by the state government the Centre was not increasing the permanent food quota for the state. Mr Mander is scheduled to meet the chief minister later this evening. (New Kerala 2/12/11)

‘Act, don’t debate, on hunger deaths’ (21) BHUBANESWAR: Amidst allegation of three starvation deaths in Nuapada district, a Supreme Court-appointed Commissioner on Food Security on Friday asked the State Government to immediately respond to the situation. “The Government must identify hunger and severe malnutrition pockets and ensure that the people are not denied their right to food,” Special Commissioner on Food Security Harsh Mander said. “There should not be debate on how a person died. The debate should be on whether hunger prevails in the area where starvation death reports came,” Mander told mediapersons. “Mere denial of hunger deaths will not help solve the problem,” he said, adding that the administration should keep track of condition of distressed families and provide assistance to overcome poverty situation in the aftermath of starvation deaths in their families. Mander said schemes such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Old Age Pension, Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), Midday Meal (MDM) should be implemented and adequate foodgrain under public distribution system provided. He said though the State Government has taken certain steps for improvement in PDS, its response to address hunger is not up to the mark. State adviser to the SC-appointed Commissioner in Odisha, R K Mishra, said people in Sinapali area did not receive rice under PDS for the last five months. “Since 91 per cent of the crops were damaged due to drought, the people have been passing through a difficult phase,” he said. The commissioner also reviewed implementation of Supreme Court directives on supplementary nutrition programme (SNP) involving self-help groups (SHGs), mahila mandals in purchase of food stuff and preparation of meals, decentralisation of production of take home rations through SHGs and functioning of the anganwadi centres. The Government informed the commissioner that it has submitted proposals for opening 1,500 anganwadi centres on demand from the people and another 1,700 new centres to the Centre for clearance. (NIE 3/12/11)

1.75 lakh bogus BPL families de-listed (21) Mumbai: Taking a serious note of the Centre’s observations that inclusion of 24% families in Maharashtra’s Below Poverty Line (BPL) list was bogus, the state rural development department has deleted 1.75 lakh families from the list in one year. However, this is only 2% of the total 45 lakh families registered in the list from the state. The department has also lodged police complaints against 8,000 families for providing false information to be included in the list. On the national level, it was found that 40% of the names in the list are bogus. Also, nearly 25% families, entitled to be in the list, have not made it on the national level; the Maharashtra figure is 11%. These figures were revealed after the findings in the Sample Survey of India. State rural development minister Jayant Patil held a meeting of all party

MLAs and sought their support to eradicate ill practices that were defeating the whole purpose of the scheme. The department launched a drive and made announcements in rural areas appealing people to delete their names from the list if they have registered by providing false information. “We gave them one month to withdraw the names on their own. After that, we prepared a list of those who were still in the list fraudulently and lodged complaints against nearly 8,000 families. About 500 FIRs were lodged. Some deleted their names after that. The remaining names were declared in the local newspapers to mount pressure on the rest of the families,” said an officer from Mantralaya. The officer said that local MLAs and politicians put pressure on the machinery for the inclusion of families from their constituency to safeguard their vote bank. However, Sudhir Thakare, secretary of the department, said once the new socio-economic survey is completed by the end of April 2012, the number of fraudulent beneficiaries will automatically be wiped out. “First phase of the survey comprising 18 districts is underway and is expected to be completed by the end of January. The second phase in March will make ascertaining of the income groups for various schemes easier,” he added. (DNA 5/12/11)

NREGA's new avatar: Work later, take home cash now (21) NEW DELHI: The government is likely to allow advance part payment of wages in a bid to restore faith of beneficiaries in its flagship rural jobs scheme. The proposal is part of a slew of measures to address mounting criticism of the centrally-funded Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) which is beset by administrative logjam and charges of leakages. The rural development ministry has asked states to initiate a monthlong pilot project in select districts or panchayats where payments are especially delayed. Based on the feedback, a firm advance payments scheme can be designed. "We have asked states to do the pilots in those areas where delay in payment is primarily due to shortage of staff," said an official in the rural development ministry who did not wish to be identified. "The amounts paid in advance will get adjusted from actual payment due whenever measurement of assets is over and wages due are calculated," the official added. Wages are often delayed for more than six months because of inadequate bank penetration, postal network and human resource. Delays in measurement of work done under the scheme and lack of personnel to process muster rolls also causes payments to be stuck at various administrative levels. "It has been suggested that till the Banking Correspondent (BC) network is augmented and till the postal network spreads out to all panchayats areas, part payments to workers may be considered as an option," a letter written by the rural development ministry to the state governments says. Under the BC model, agents are used to deliver services on a commission mission basis to increase banking penetration in rural areas. The ministry has admitted in the letter that timely payment of wages remains a hindrance to successful implementation of the scheme. Though the ministry has received just 50 complaints related to nonpayment of wages under the scheme, it is believed that the figure does not reflect the enormity of the problem because most beneficiaries do not lodge a complaint. Payments in most cases under the pilot project are likely to be done through cash transfers even as the ministry's move does not necessarily allow for direct cash transfer of wages. "It is not linked to the mode of payment but as it is an alternative to the BC model and post office payments, states will prefer direct cash transfers," an official with a state rural development department told ET. The pilot project is being initiated as the ministry's efforts to extend the outreach of banks and post offices are likely to take time to get fully rooted. The ministry had two months ago issued guidelines to all states to ensure compulsory payment of wages only through bank and post office accounts. Within a month, however, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh announced that due to lack of infrastructure and human resource the option was not feasible in all parts of the country. The minister had, therefore, made concession in the rule by allowing cash transfers in 60 Maoist-affected affected districts in the country. Tamil Nadu is the only state where all wage payments are transferred directly in cash. Advance payment has been supported by experts like National Advisory Council member Harsh Mander who say that such a move will not only restore faith of the workers, but also increase the rate of completion of works. (Times of India 5/12/11)

Fishermen finding it tough to survive, says report (21) KOZHIKODE: Traditional fishermen in the state are losing interest in fishing because of their failure to draw a stable income from it, reveals a survey by the Malabar Coastal Institute for Training Research and Action. It says only two per cent of the fisher folk is engaged in fishing now. The report prepared by compiling data from fishermen living across the state also finds flaws in various projects implemented by the government for their educational empowerment. The projects have not yielded the desired impact

owing to the increase in the number of school dropouts, says the study. Only two percent of children belonging to the fishing community continues high school education, it says. The MICTRA staff conduct researches and training programmes for the welfare of fishermen. They say that the study had identified unequal distribution of above poverty line (APL) cards within the community. Many of the below poverty line (BPL) families were given APL cards without taking into account the financial backwardness of the families, says the report. The average per capita income of a Malayali is Rs10,107. However, the average per capita income of a fisherman is only Rs 5,645, reveals the study. Health, education and occupational hazards, environmental problems of living in the coastal region, the plight of women belonging to the fishermen community and the problems caused by the increased inflow of migrant labourers from Tamil Nadu, Orissa and other states to the Kerala coast have also been identified by the study. The report contains a detailed analysis of the living conditions of fishermen. The study was conducted in the backdrop of the XII Five-Year Plan, says Baby John, MCITRA director. The report has been submitted to the chief minister and the State Planning Board to invite their immediate attention to the issue, he says. "We are also planning to submit the study report to the Central Government," says John. The report, prepared in Malayalam has to be translated into English before submitting to the Centre, he added. (Times of India 8/12/11)

Developing nations offer solutions for tackling hun ger: UN (21) New York, Dec 10 : The President of the UN General Assembly on Friday lauded the Global South-South Development Expo held in Rome as a strong testimony to the creativity of developing countries to achieve global food security. “This year’s Expo has demonstrated the power of the Global South to respond quickly to development challenges and meet global needs for adequate food and nutrition,” he stated in remarks to the closing ceremony that were delivered by his Deputy Chef de Cabinet, Tariq Ali Al-Ansari. “We can leave here on Friday, knowing that the South-South spirit of striving for collective self-reliance is stronger than ever before,” he stated, noting that there have been many “dynamic” examples of successful solutions on display to address the pressing demand for food security. “Documenting, showcasing and exchanging these solutions and lessons learned will allow for their scaling up and easy replication across the globe,” said Al-Nasser. “This is imperative for us to truly energise the agenda for South-South and triangular cooperation.” South-South cooperation is based on solidarity among developing countries and links countries that have development solutions to share, with countries in need of expertise. Representatives of countries, civil society, the private sector and UN agencies came together at the week-long Expo, hosted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), to share success stories from past and ongoing South-South partnerships, and explore new ideas and solutions for long-term and sustainable food security. “During our time together, we have been reminded of the tremendous number of hungry people in the world, but we have also been encouraged by success stories shared from all over the world,” stated Al-Nasser. “In many Southern countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, these solutions and innovative partnerships have captured our interest and ignited our imagination. “As we now prepare to go back to our homes and offices, it is also time to plan for the years ahead, envisioning how best we might translate the knowledge and experiences shared here into real, sustainable solutions,” he said. “Achieving food security is our collective purpose moving on from this Expo.” (IBNS) (New Kerala 10/12/11)

India fights for right of development of 1.2 billio n people (21) DURBAN | Agency: IANS: Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan Saturday made an emotional appeal to the rich countries, asking for space for basic development for its 1.2 billion people and eradication of poverty. Speaking at the ministerial session on the last day of the UN climate talks in Durban, Natarajan said: "India is asking for space for basic development for its people and poverty eradication. Is this an unreasonable demand?" She contested the principle of equity -- right to grow -- saying it should be the centrepiece of the climate discussion and that negotiations should be built on it. "We cannot accept the principle of common but differentiated responsibility (CBDR) to be diluted. The firewall between rich and poor countries must not be broken," she said. The minister, who got a standing ovation after she finished her speech, said she was astonished and disturbed by the comments from Canada who pointed at India for not agreeing to a legally binding agreement. "I am disturbed to find that a legally binding protocol to the convention, negotiated just 14 years ago, is now being junked in a cavalier manner. Countries which had signed and ratified it are walking away without even saying a polite goodbye. And yet, pointing at others," she said. Some countries, including Canada, do not want the second commitment period of the

Kyoto Protocol -- the only existing regime that caps greenhouse gas emissions. "It would be helpful if we do not talk at each other and do not prejudge each other," she said. Natarajan rebutted charges of holding up the process at Durban. "We are not saying nothing should be done now, or no action should be taken. On the contrary, we are asking that the actions of the developed country parties must be reviewed," she said. (DNA 10/12/11)

Food security Bill will not ramp up subsidy: Thomas (21) New Delhi: Just two days ahead of a crucial cabinet meeting to clear the UPA-II government’s National Food Security Bill (NFSB), food minister KV Thomas on Sunday said the country’s food subsidy would not go up significantly following implementation mega initiative, which aims at giving legal entitlement to subsidised foodgrains to two-third of the country's population. “Through modernisation of the Targetted Public Distribution System and improvement in the foodgrains storage mechanism, we are aiming at reducing wastages of grains which would eventually reduce the food subsidy component,” Thomas told FE. The Union cabinet is slated to meet on Tuesday to consider approving the food Bill, which the ministry intends to introduce in the current season of Parliament. Thomas said the annual food subsidy bill, following the implementation of NFSB, would go up from the current level of R63,000 crore to R95,000 crore in the short run. However, with the reduction foodgrain losses due to modernisation of TPDS, which is expected to bring down food grains pilferage currently estimated at 30% to 40%, “the food subsidy would be reduced to around R70,000 crore within two to three years”. “Five years back, annual foodgrain wastage during transportation from various godowns of Food Corporation of India and state government agencies was around 2.5 lakh tonne, which we have managed to bring down to around 4000 tonne at present through creating better storage facilities,” Thomas said. The food ministry has also managed to incorporate many of the contentious clauses into the food Bill, which were initially opposed by finance ministry. According to the final draft approved by the Empowered Group of Minister (EGoM), a clause providing a monthly allowance of R1,000 for six months to all lactating mothers for providing ‘nutrition security’ in the rural areas under the Janani Suraksha Yojana has been included. Besides, under the final version of the food Bill, which has stipulated 75% of the rural households will get subsidised grain under the law, atleast 46% households would be considered as ‘priority’ category, and each person in these households will get the 7kg grain a month at subsidised prices— R2 per kg for rice, R3 for wheat and R1 for coarse grain. In case of urban centres, out of the 50% of the total households to be covered under the food Act, atleast 28% would get ‘priority’ status. “It implies that quantum of priority sector population entitled for subsidised food grains will even go up beyond stipulated numbers,” Thomas said. (The Financial Express 12/12/11)

Union Cabinet clears Food Security Bill (21) NEW DELHI: The union cabinet Sunday approved the draft National Food Security Bill, which seeks to provide subsidised foodgrains to over half of India's 1.2 billion population. The bill is likely to be presented to parliament in the next few days and would be referred to standing committee, sources said . Another special meeting of the cabinet is likely to be held Monday morning to approve the Lokpal bill, which is still being fine tuned, the sources added. The food security bill promises 75 percent of rural population and 50 percent of urban households, the right to 7 kg foodgrains per person, at Rs.3 per kg for rice, Rs.2 per kg for wheat and Rs.1 per kg for coarse grains to the priority beneficiaries. The general category will be provided at least three kilograms of foodgrains per person per month at half the minimum selling price. It will also provide rations or cooked meals to children under 14 years of age, destitutes including women and persons on the margins of society. The bill is the pet project of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council and was part of the Congress manifesto for the 2009 general election. The cabinet, which had deferred a decision on the bill Dec 13, cleared it after Gandhi's push. Food ministry sources said the bill provides for cost-sharing to pacify the states, which will implement the law. The states have also objected over the authority to decide on the criteria to identify the beneficiaries. A three-tier grievance redressal mechanism at district, state and national level is also part of the legislation. Sources said Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar had expressed concern that food subsidy, currently at Rs.63,000 crore ($12 billion), may go up to Rs.1.2 lakh crore ($23 billion) if the bill is implemented. Rising fertiliser prices and the minimum support price (MSP) of the grains was another concern. Sources said managing the fianances would not be a problem but procurement would have to be improved. It is estimated that

against the current procurement levels of 54 millions tonnes, the requirement may go up to 62 million tonnes. Government foodgrain stocks in August 2011 were 61.27 million tonnes. (NIE 18/12/11)

PPCC for educating MPs about food security bill (21 ) JALANDHAR: After Union cabinet has cleared the food security bill, the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee wants Congress president Sonia Gandhi to not only put a rigorous monitoring system in place but also to educate party MPs to reach out to people, saying that it was a Congress initiative. In a letter to Sonia Gandhi, PPCC publicity cell convener Varinder Sharma said that implementation of NREGA had established that a rigorous monitoring system should be put in place and MPs should be involved in its monitoring. While NREGA was passed and implemented by UPA government, state governments of other parties managed to reap its political benefits, the letter said. Now the party should ensure that MPs reach out to workers and spread the message among people that it was a Congress initiative, to ensure that things were delivered more efficiently, he said in the letter.(Times of India 20/12/11)

Food subsidy bill hit R45,125 cr on December 15, sa ys Thomas (21) New Delhi: The Centre has released R45,125 crore towards food subsidy until December 15, in line with its budgeted subsidy of R60,572 crore for the current fiscal through March 2012. India’s food subsidy bill rose to R62,929,56 crore in 2010-11 from R58,242.45 crore the year before, food and public distribution minister K V Thomas said in Parliament on Monday, a day after the Cabinet cleared the food security bill that proposes to widen the government's subsidised grain sales to feed the poor. The food subsidy in India, the world’s second most-populous nation, is expected to swell to R93,000 crore a year if the ambitious food security act is implemented, Thomas had said earlier this month. The bill aims to provide legal entitlement for subsidised grain to 75% of the rural households and 50% of urban households. Food, fertiliser and fuel subsidies account for a bulk of the government’s subsidy burden and are a key factor in the country’s widening fiscal deficit. The central government provides food subsidy to state-run Food Corporation of India and state governments for procuring grain under the decentralised procurement scheme to build official reserves and supply through public distribution system and other welfare programmes. As much as 48.87 million tonne of grain have been allocated for supplies through the PDS so far this fiscal, Thomas said. Uttar Pradesh leads the pack of beneficiary states with allocation touching 7.11 million tonnes, followed by Maharashtra (4.64 million tonne). The minister said strengthening the PDS by improving the monitoring mechanism and vigilance is key to preventing large-scale pilferage. Thomas also said around 87,000 tonne of grain was lost in FCI godowns until September in the current fiscal due to factors including moisture, rats, birds and general spoilage. Grain losses in the last fiscal had risen to 156,000 tonne from 1,31,000 tonnes in 2009-10 and 58,000 tonne in 2008-09, he added. Last year, opposition parties protested against the losses of grains at various government go-downs, accusing the government of not taking adequate measures to check such losses when many poor people are going to bed hungry everyday. Separately, Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar told the Rajya Sabha that the central government is willing to lend a helping hand to states that want to export perishable items such as potato. He said the Centre is intervening in the market on the request of states for the procurement of horticulture commodities that are generally perishable and aren’t covered under the minimum support price scheme. The government's market intervention scheme is implemented to avoid distress sale by farmers when prices tend to fall below the cost of production. The agriculture minister said the procurement of potato can be done by agencies like NAFED, if state governments concerned bear half the losses incurred in such an operation. (The Financial Express 20/12/11)

Hunger situation in India worse than sub-Sahara (21 ) If all the sacks of grains in India’s federally held stocks were to be laid next to one another, it could stretch up to the moon and back. Yet, India is among 29 countries with the highest levels of hunger, stunted children and poorly fed women, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)’s “Global Hunger Index 2010”. Despite a strong economy that has been predicted to overtake China’s within three years by the Economist magazine, India ranked 67th among 85 countries in terms of access to food. It also ranks below several Sub-Saharan nations, such as Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, and Sudan, even though per capita income in these countries is much lower than India’s. The report points to widespread hunger in a country that is the world’s largest producer of milk and edible oils, and second-largest producer of wheat and sugar. So, India’s hunger is a problem of access to food, rather than output

or availability. A recent Oxford University study found 410 million people were living in poverty and food insecurity in just eight Indian states – more than in 26 sub-Saharan African countries. “Alarmingly, not a single Indian state falls in low or moderate categories; most states have a serious hunger problem,” says Anil B. Deolalikar, professor of economics at the University of California, Riverside, co-author of the India State Hunger Index. The FAO defines hunger as the consumption of fewer than 1,800 kilocalories a day — the minimum required to live a healthy and productive life — which 200 million Indians lack. (Hindustan Times 24/12/11)

AIDWA wants Food Security Bill rejected (21) NEW DELHI, December 24, 2011: The All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) has called upon Parliament to reject the National Food Security Bill introduced in the Lok Sabha on Thursday. In a statement issued on Friday, the association said the Bill was a “more dangerous and rehashed version” of the current Targeted Public Distribution System, that proved to be an “utter failure” in view of the manner in which it eroded the food security of the majority of the poor, the dalits, the tribals and women, by excluding them from its ambit. The latest draft proposes to make available subsidised foodgrains to only certain “priority” (formerly BPL) households. Their numbers would be predetermined by the Centre and identified by a “flawed survey” based on “fraudulent criteria” that would exclude a majority of the poor. The remaining “general” (formerly APL) households would be given foodgrains priced at not less than half the Minimum Support Price paid for procuring these grains, and their entitlements would be linked to certain “reforms in the PDS” prescribed by the Centre from time to time, it said. These reforms include cash transfers that have been euphemistically called “food security allowance,” the use of food coupons and the highly controversial Aadhaar card that does not even have Parliamentary sanction. The Bill also reduces the current household entitlement of 35 kg to a per capita entitlement of 7 kg for “priority” (BPL) and only 3 kg for “general” (APL) households, as against a WHO prescribed norm of at least 11 kg. The Bill proposes to provide wheat at Rs. 2 and rice at Rs. 3 per kg at a time when several State governments have on their own accord increased the number of households entitled to BPL status and was providing them with foodgrains at Rs. 1 or 2 per kg. The Bill was therefore a cruel joke on the people, especially the women who were suffering from a constant erosion of the PDS and an incessant increase in prices of essential commodities, which had led to widespread hunger and malnutrition, the association said. The AIDWA demanded that the Bill be rejected in its present form, since it had been designed to further erode the food security system in order to suit the neo-liberal agenda of the agri-business corporates, the statement said. Nothing less than a universal public distribution system would suffice for addressing this nutritional crisis. “We demand a Food Security Act that guarantees the universal right to food and ensures at least 35 kg of foodgrains per month for every household at Rs.2 per kg,” it said. (The Hindu 24/12/11)

Rahul adopts Indira’s ‘garibi hatao’ slogan (21) Forty years after Indira Gandhi got a huge mandate with her slogan “Garibi hatao”, her grandson Rahul Gandhi evoked the same slogan in the battle of the ballot in Uttar Pradesh. “Garibi hatao” and “pichrapan hatao”, he told the crowd, was the true meaning of politics. “My grandmother Indira Gandhi had given the slogan of Garibi hatao. I say poverty should be abolished and backwardness should be removed because this is the true meaning of politics. Politics does not mean filling pockets of ministers with money and not going to the villages to meet the people,” Rahul said at public meetings during his mass contact programme. He promised that the Congress would bring a government that would help the poor, dalits, backward communities, farmers and labourers beyond caste lines and requested the people to give the party five years to fulfill its promises. He said poverty would be removed if the people trusted themselves. “Trust yourself and your state, trust me. Give me five years and we will remove poverty from your state and bring about development,” he urged. Addressing a gathering in the parliamentary constituency of his cousin Varun Gandhi, who is BJP MP from Pilibhit, Rahul criticised those who did “Ram ki dalali” to get votes. The time had come for people to stop voting for parties that talk of caste, religion and sell the name of god to just get votes and then forget about development when they come to power. (Indian Express 30/12/11)