-The Hindustan Times   Do these people look well-off to you? The planning commission puts them above poverty line. Basant Kumar, 51  Shopkeeper  Kusumpur Pahari slum,  Vasant Vihar, Delhi Daily expense: Rs 53   Basant Kumar runs a little shop in a slum in Vasant Vihar, home to over two lakh migrant families. He feeds and clothes his wife and three children on his meagre earnings of Rs5,000 a month. He also works odd-jobs, in construction or with...

The Planning Commission's laughable estimates of the ‘poverty line' follow from a mistake in method that it made 30 years ago and has clung to ever since. The affidavit that the Planning Commission recently submitted before the Supreme Court stating that a person is to be considered ‘poor' only if his or her monthly spending is below Rs.781 (Rs.26 a day) in the rural areas and Rs.965 (Rs.32 a day) in...

Updating the poverty line cutoff figures, the Planning Commission said that those spending in excess of Rs 32 a day in urban areas or Rs 26 a day in villages would no longer be eligible to draw benefits for those living below the poverty line. TOI broke down the overall monthly figure for urban areas and used the CPI for industrial workers along with the Tendulkar committie report figures to see...

-The Times of India   Faced with fierce criticism over the Planning Commission’s new criteria for poverty line, the Government has asked the Plan panel to revise its affidavit. The Planning Commission had said that that those spending more than Rs. 32 a day in urban areas, or Rs. 26 a day in villages, would no longer be eligible to draw benefits meant for those living below the poverty line. The new tentative...

The acronym LPG has several expansions. It stands for liquefied petroleum gas. It stands for liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, a term of abuse used by those with Leftwing persuasions. It stands for life plundered by the government, sentiments associated with those who are against state intervention, but increasingly felt by the so-called middle class - however defined - because of price hikes, and proposed price hikes, for petroleum products. Ostensibly, price...