-The Hindu Although the SECC’s objectives are not likely to be met, it is a big step towards providing accurate information on the well-being of the people. The release of data for rural households from the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) is only the latest step in India’s tortured history of trying to count its poor. The idea behind the SECC was technocratic. Commissioned by the United Progressive Alliance in 2011,...
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SECC reveals two Indias, but government refuses to disclose caste data -Iftikhar Gilani
-DNA OBCs make upto 66.48% of the total 17.92 crore rural households – much higher than 54% decided by the Mandal Commission in 1980 Even as the Union government shied away from releasing the caste data collected in 2011, the rural socio-economic survey data put out on Friday speaks of two Indias – that of the affluent and the poor. Around 73 % of the country's people live in villages, with the...
More »In Bollywood, storylines remain backward on caste -Rukmini S & Udhav Naig
-The Hindu But Tamil films are refreshingly different. Just six of the lead characters in the nearly 300 Bollywood movies released over the last two years belonged to a backward caste, an analysis of data by The Hindu shows. In contrast, a substantial number of popular Tamil movies of 2013 and 2014 had backward caste lead characters. For an insight into the depiction of caste in Bollywood, The Hindu analysed all Hindi movies released...
More »8 Indian states = 25 African nations: Oxford study on poverty -Prasun Sonwalkar
-Hindustan Times London: There are 1.6 billion people living in multidimensional poverty across the world and nearly 440 million of them are in eight large Indian states, according to a new analysis using a unique index developed at the University of Oxford. The eight Indian states that have similar number of poor as in 25 African countries are Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Odisha, Rajasthan and West Bengal. The poorest...
More »Think tank report hints at diversion of cheap farm loans -Puja Mehra
-The Hindu Huge subsidy of 5 percentage points being leveraged. Pointing to a possible diversion of subsidised funds meant for farmers to non-agricultural uses, a research paper by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) has found that the crop loans extended in India are in fact close to exceeding the total expenditure on farm sector inputs. In 2012-13, the aggregate short-term credit — provided primarily to finance the purchase...
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