-The Telegraph The government today set up an expert committee to suggest a new methodology for determining who is Poor and who is not, following widespread condemnation of its existing criteria last year. However, the five-member committee headed by C. Rangarajan, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, will also examine the existing methodology, which was suggested by a previous expert panel formed under Suresh Tendulkar. Tendulkar’s methodology was solely based on...

-IANS The government on Thursday set up a technical panel to review the Tendulkar Committee methodology for deciding the poverty line for which it has under increasing criticism in recent months.  The technical group panel headed by the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council Chairman C. Rangarajan will "revisit the methodology for estimation of the poverty and identification of the Poor," the Planning Commission said in a statement.  Based on the methodologies suggested by...

-The Hindustan Times The government on Thursday put the controversial poverty estimation in a deep freeze by appointing a new expert group to recommend a new estimation methodology aimed at linking government subsidies to Poor. The group to be led by C Rangarajan, head of Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council and having three others members is expected to submit its report in nine months, minister of planning Ashwini Kumar told reporters. However, not...

In a Bangladeshi folk story, a disabled grandfather is carried by his son in a basket, to be abandoned in the forest. On seeing this, the grandson calls out, 'Father, please be sure to bring back the basket. I will need it when you grow old'. Three thousand ageing men and women gathered in Delhi in the blazing midsummer heat to demand a universal pension for all aged people, not...

A rural Indian spending Rs. 22.50 a day would not be considered Poor by a Planning Commission whose Deputy Chairman's foreign trips between May and October last year cost a daily average of Rs. 2.02 lakh Pranab Mukherjee's stirring call for austerity tugs at the national tear ducts. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has pleaded for it in the past and watched his flock embrace it creatively. With the Finance Ministry even...