BANWARA, India – In the fall of 2006, Gita Devi was pregnant with her sixth child when her family fell on hard times. A severe drought made it more difficult than ever to find farm work here in India’s northeastern plains. The family couldn’t afford food. It was unable to get a government ration card to buy grains and rice at steep discounts, even though it clearly was poor enough to...

There is no case whatsoever to construct a single poverty line based on a calorie or expenditure norm; all such lines are arbitrary and do not take into account the different dimensions of poverty. It is far better to focus on disaggregated information on a variety of parameters – education, housing, clothing, health, etc – which can give us unambiguous information about the different facets of poverty over the course...

In the ninth year of his 10-year term in Tihar, 25-year-old Anil is savouring a taste of what life might soon be for him. Between 11 am and 6 pm, Anil is free — free to roam around the 450-acre prison complex and work at Tihar Haat, to enter which he actually steps out of the prison gate. Anil is one of two prisoners made a part of Tihar’s semi-open jail...

-The Wall Street Journal These days, Indian policymakers are debating how to create a vast new food entitlement program. There is talk of poor households struggling to cope with high food prices and malnourishment among their children. What you don’t hear much about, however, is the most tragic and outrageous consequence of India’s failure to feed its people adequately: starvation deaths. India is a nation that prides itself on having been self-sufficient in...

Each time 25 year old Salma takes her one year old son Zubair to the Batla Clinic (a private clinic in Delhi) for a shot of the DPT, the cost of transportation and the vaccine adds up to approximately Rs.500.   When it is time for Zubair to take the next immunization dose, Salma may find that the expenses have entirely spiraled out of her reach. New vaccines and expensive brands of baby...