-EPW   The media noise shed little light on the important issues involved in deciding the coverage of welfare programmes. The context for the Planning Commission’s (PC) affidavit on the official poverty line was the deliberation in the Supreme Court on how many people could be covered by the public distribution system (PDS). But while the sound and fury over the poverty line – Rs 32 per capita per day in the urban...

What kept Prime Minister Manmohan Singh busy after securing minister A Raja’s resignation on the night of November 14 last year?   He was writing a reply to National Advisory Council chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s letter on the practice of manual scavenging. On November 15, he wrote to her that he was asking the Minister of Social Justice & Empowerment to “examine how to strengthen” implementation of the Employment of Manual Scavengers and...

-The Economic Times   The Planning Commission, under a sustained attack from the Union Cabinet and the National Advisory Council over its affidavit to the Supreme Courtthat claimed that the rural poor can take care of his food, educational and health requirements with 25 a day, is expected to revise its stand on Monday. This follows a meeting between Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here...

In a significant move, prominent economists on Monday made a forceful plea to delink food entitlements from the “faulty” poverty measures put out by the Planning Commission. Asserting that under-nutrition was much more widespread in the country than income poverty “however defined,” the economists sought restoration of the universal Public Distribution System (PDS) “as the best way forward'' in combating hunger and poverty. “This is not only feasible within the available fiscal...

A report from a sample survey of the functioning of the public distribution system in 12 villages in two districts in Orissa, a state usually associated with a poor PDS. While there are errors in exclusion and inclusion of households covered, there has been a vast improvement in operation of the PDS; below the poverty line households seem to be receiving their entitlements. The households also express a strong preference...