-The Hindu Business Line There’s room for more awareness and organisation, but the number of people benefiting from fair price shops is growing Poor people in India depend heavily on the public distribution system. A recent survey by the National Council of Applied Economic Research found that more than 90 per cent ration card-holders in Below Poverty Line (BPL) / Priority Households (PHH) and the Antyodaya Anna Yojna category purchase foodgrain at...

-TheWire.in According to the central government’s statement to the Supreme Court last week, a third of the India’s districts are currently facing a severe drought. This means that at least 33 crore Indians are affected by ongoing the crisis. Expressing their deep concern on the issue and the impact it is having on rural populations of the country, and asking that the government take appropriate relief measures immediately, more than 150 academics...

-The Hindu Swathes of land lie unused; peasants migrate or take their own lives as the crippling water crisis shatters their hopes. BUNDELKHAND: On the night on March 27, Musru Prajapati was up as usual, keeping vigil in his field at Khurhand village in Banda, Uttar Pradesh. Three consecutive droughts, with bouts of hailstorms and unseasonal rains, had dented his morale. He wanted to defend whatever little crop he managed to grow...

-The Hindu Business Line The only way this story of the Indian farmer will change is if policymakers ensure better remuneration for them The peasant (in India) is born in debt, lives in debt, dies in debt and bequeaths debt. This is what Sir Malcolm Darling, a famous British researcher and writer, wrote in 1925 after studying the condition of undivided Punjab’s peasants. Had Darling been alive today he would have rephrased his...

-The Indian Express A neat separation of poverty estimates and entitlements won’t pass muster. There was much hope about the work that Arvind Panagariya was mandated to do on the measurement of poverty. I, for one, have held from the 1980s that the official poverty line that emerged from a taskforce I chaired in 1976-77 should be shelved. Panagariya has reportedly suggested that the Tendulkar Committee’s report should be accepted for...