-The Hindu In figures officially released this week, the Planning Commission claims that poverty incidence had declined from 37.2 per cent of the population in 2004-05 to 21.9 per cent in 2011-12. This 15.3 percentage points decline over a seven-year period amounts to an unprecedented annual decline of 2.2 percentage points in the poverty rate. If that trend is sustained, it would lead to an end to "official" poverty in India...

-The Hindu Development, price rise and jobs will be the overriding voter concerns in 2014 Lok Sabha poll Results from a nearly 20,000-strong opinion poll conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) for CNN-IBN and The Hindu indicate that ‘development and the economy' and ‘price rise' will dominate voter concerns in 2014. Corruption comes in at a distant fifth, just half as important to voters as ‘development and...

-The Indian Express Panchayat elections in West Bengal frame the same old politics of coercion and intimidation As always, panchayat polls in West Bengal have left a trail of violence across the state. At least five people were killed as the polls entered their fourth phase on Monday, taking the total toll in these elections into double digits. For a state that is said to have gone through poriborton two years ago,...

-The Business Standard But many numbers point to contrary trends The latest numbers on poverty levels are dramatic; they show that the number of people below the poverty line (as defined by the late economist Suresh Tendulkar) has shrunk from 37 per cent of the population to 22 per cent, in the seven years to 2011-12. This is an unprecedented rate of fall in poverty levels; some 40 per cent of those...

-The Hindu Social audits of the mid-day meal scheme by parents can ensure that the world's largest intervention against hunger that also helps keep children in school need not suffer setbacks like the Bihar tragedy This week, 23 children lost their lives after having a mid-day meal served at a school in Bihar's Saran district. Preliminary reports suggest that the school lacked a storage facility for foodgrain which led to contamination and...