Renowned wildlife biologist and tiger expert Ullas Karanth expressed serious reservations about the Methodology adopted in the national tiger population estimation exercise. The results were released in Delhi on Monday, as per which the number of tigers across the country had increased from 1411 in 2006, to 1706. He called for an end to the government monopoly on tiger monitoring, and suggested that outside expertise and resources be harnessed so as...
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Dr Arvind Virmani, Affiliate Professor (& Distinguished Senior Fellow), George Mason University (School of Public Policy-CEMP), and Executive Director, IMF interviewed by TCA Srinivasa-Raghavan
Given a positive regulatory environment, banks and other financial intermediaries will certainly be interested in using the smart card opportunity. Dr Arvind Virmani, with a Ph.D. from Harvard and 30 years of professional experience, is one of the most valued economists in the Government. Before he retired as Chief Economic Advisor in 2009, he had served in the Finance Ministry and the Planning Commission. A researcher par excellence, his research papers...
More »Universalization of food security law may take a hit, shows survey by Subodh Ghildiyal & Rajeev Deshpande
A pilot survey finding that 25-30% of the rural population can be automatically excluded from food security entitlements for below poverty line population might help forge a consensus between the government and the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council. The "automatic exclusion" criteria, devised on the basis of the N C Saxena report on Methodology for a BPL census, is more liberal than the "bare bones" approach adopted by the government in...
More »Ministry rejects NAC Methodology of identifying priority households by Smita Gupta
Accord highest priority to inclusion of SCs and STs, says Council Ministry's Methodology will result in some of the most vulnerable slipping through cracks: NAC Exclusion could prove politically disastrous to United Progressive Alliance 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...
More »Long way to go by PS Krishnan
Budget 2011-12 and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. THREE decades ago, in the early years of the Special Component Plan (SCP) for Scheduled Castes – very recently renamed inappropriately as Scheduled Castes Sub-Plan (SCSP) – Indira Gandhi on her return as Prime Minister wrote two historical D.O. letters dated March 12, 1980, one to Central Ministers and the other to State Chief Ministers, regarding the SCP in the Central...
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