The purpose of this piece is not to defend the Planning Commission on poverty figures but to indicate that the methodologies have evolved over time after considerable research and they are useful for policy purposes if not for linking with entitlement programmes (some of us have written earlier that the poor and vulnerable are more numerous than the commission's poverty figures and these should be delinked from entitlement programmes).  The commission...

Consumption-based measures don’t accurately estimate poverty Since the publication of poverty estimates purportedly based on the Tendulkar methodology and the 2009-10 consumption survey of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), many in Parliament and outside, from different political parties, have questioned its conclusions. Concomitantly, media reactions have speculated on poverty’s relationship with fertility, growth, specific schemes, et al. But, India’s poverty, like itself, refuses to classify itself in simple boxes. Beyond the...

A new study looking at cancer mortality in 2010 in India found a high 71 per cent (3,95,400) deaths in people between 30 and 69 years. Cancer accounted for 8 per cent of the 2·5 million total male deaths and 12 per cent of the 1·6 million total female deaths in the same age group. The high mortality rate during the middle age is very different from the developed countries,...

Much has been written about divorce being on the rise in India, sometimes accompanied by hand-wringing about the egos and inflexibility of younger couples, who seem less willing than their parents to stay in marriages they are not happy with. National statistics don’t exist on divorce in India, but some local records do show a rise. Still, some experts say the divorce rate in India continues to be artificially low, because...

This month, two women’s stories, told courageously, helped to underline the reality of domestic violence in India. Nita Bhalla, a journalist, wrote for the BBC about being physically assaulted by her partner. Meena Kandasamy, a poet and writer on social issues, wrote movingly in Outlook, a national newsmagazine, of surviving a violent marriage: “My skin has seen enough hurt to tell its own story.” Both Ms. Kandasamy and Ms. Bhalla are,...