-The Business Standard   A day before the National Development Council is scheduled to meet and possibly debate on the poverty line and the Food Security Bill, the second India Human Development Report -2011 has said India progressed well in social development front, with higher enrollment rates in education, and a shift towards social inclusion of marginalised communities and minorities. The report, by the Institute of Applied Manpower Research, an autonomous body under...

Only in India does redistribution, which keeps the poor and marginalised out of the mainstream of the economy, pass for inclusive growth. In much of the rest of the world, inclusive growth would mean giving the poor and marginalised a direct stake in the economy with fast-growing industries and services absorbing them into gainful employment and, thus, making them true participants and partners in the growth process.  But in India, we...

As a national debate rages over the Indian poverty line, in the heart of Bandra, one of Mumbai’s richest suburbs, in a shanty with barely enough standing space for two adults, three-year-old Priya Doiphode, clad in a red tee shirt, lies listless on a string bed. Priya is one of the 83,243 children in Mumbai who are malnourished, according to government data, a statistic that makes Mumbai the most malnourished...

India’s poor can take heart — for there’s justice even in this world, despite and in spite of the Planning Commission. Planning Commission deputy chairman, and expert on poverty, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, has gotten off his high horse. Ahluwalia said on Monday that a new committee would be set up to come up with a fresh method to identify India’s poor. Last week the Commission had filed an affidavit in the...

The Planning Commission’s poverty line affidavit has exposed how blissfully ignorant the glorified economists of the UPA are of the true reality of India The 2G spectrum scam, Commonwealth Games loot, cash-for-vote bribery, Lokpal fiasco, Pranab-Chidambaram duel on the Finance Ministry note, and the count goes on. It seems the UPA-II is stuck in a rut.  As if the battering by the united Opposition and hauling over the coals by civil...