-Frontline Health activists say the health chapter of the Twelfth Plan document exaggerates the role of the private sector in providing health care. The draft chapter on health for the Twelfth Five Year Plan document not only is grossly inadequate in its approach but exaggerates to unrealistic levels the role of the private sector in providing health care. It invokes the concept of universal health care (UHC), but, critics say, it...

-The Financial Express Poverty in India has come down to 26 per cent as per the latest data of household expenditure prepared by the nssO for 2011-12, the Planning Commission said today. "Many of the academicians...said that poverty in 2011-12 using the Tendulkar line would probably be around 26 per cent or little more than that which is much lower than what it was in 2000, " Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek...

The much awaited results of the National Sample Survey have once again spilled the beans about India’s effort in fighting poverty. The provisional results of the 68th Round of National Sample Survey (nss) of household consumption expenditure (which is often taken as a proxy for income) finds that the average monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) at current prices in urban areas (Rs. 2401.68) is 1.87 times more than the average...

-The Indian Express New nss data affirms that GDP growth remains the best way to tackle poverty Amid the pervasive economic gloom, provisional data from the 68th round of the National Sample Survey Office’s just-concluded household consumer expenditure survey offers a sliver of good news. According to it, average inflation-adjusted expenditure for July 2011-June 2012 rose by about 4.5 per cent in two years, with the poorest 10 per cent of the...

-The Economic Times The latest consumption figures from the National Sample Survey Organisation show that rural consumption grew 18% in the two years to 2011-12.  Poverty fell by roughly 7% in villages and 1% in towns. The town-country gap in incomes narrowed. This is welcome but needs to be qualified. 2009-10 was a drought year, depressing consumption and thereby exaggerating the improvement registered two years later.  Over a longer seven-year period, between 2004-05...