The Kolkata Group is an independent initiative inspired and chaired by Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen. Once a year, it brings together participants drawn from various fields to explore the many inter-connections between inequality, deprivation, human development, and democracy. Its special focus has been on examining ways of advancing people’s health and education. The organisations supporting the Kolkata Group are UNICEF India, Professor Sen’s Pratichi Trust, and the Harvard-based Global...

The draft Food Security Bill, which has returned to the negotiating table of the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) after a gap, is, among other things, expected to witness discussions on the number of people to be covered by the scheme across the country, whether the other vulnerable sections of the society are to brought within its ambit, whether it should be confined to the distribution of either rice or...

Anxious to ensure fiscal discipline and manage financial resources for its flagship programmes, UPA-2 is considering deletion of the Above Poverty Line (APL) beneficiaries from the ambit of the proposed food security law. It seems garnering money for UPA's pet promise of "food for all" is turning out to be a big headache as a note circulated for the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) has argued in favour of mandating...

Just as microcredit on its own does not represent full financial inclusion, it is our view that neither do business correspondent accounts In a country of 1.2 billion individuals, if we exclude children, we should at least have 900 million bank account holders before we can say the job of basic inclusion in banking is complete. No matter how we count, however, the actual number of bank account holders do not...

‘Steps needed to ensure effective utilisation of funds’  Taking a serious note of the non-allocation and under-utilisation of resources for various government schemes, civil society organisations have sought more funds for flagship schemes in the health and education sectors in the Union budget and steps to ensure utilisation of the funds allocated. The Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability and Oxfam India said on Tuesday that there was a need...