-Live Mint Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh said the committee's recommendations will be accepted New Delhi: A government committee has recommended issuing below-poverty-line (BPL) cards to all 4 million households in 22 backward districts that are affected by the Maoist insurgency. The committee, set up by the rural development ministry, also recommended the inclusion in another 34 such districts of households that are headed by a scheduled caste or scheduled tribe member,...

Argumentative Indians are at it again! After sparring over the poverty line and the actual number of poor, India's renowned economists have fired up a fresh debate over the extent of malnutrition. In the earlier debate, the Planning Commission ‘reduced' poverty on paper disregarding NSSO and official committees, including the NCEUS, which determined that 77% Indians survived on less than Rs 20 a day. Columbia university economist Arvind Panagariya has...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: If the dictum 'you can't manage what you can't measure' is true, then the government has an unsure grip over at least half the 13 flagship schemes worth nearly Rs 2 lakh crore annually, almost 80% of the total spend on central schemes. The government is unable to efficiently collate information to assess whether some of the 13 key flagship schemes are producing the results for...

-PTI NEW DELHI: The Planning Commission today approved plan size of Rs 2,000 crore for 2013-14 for Nagaland, down 13 per cent from a year ago. This was discussed here at a meeting between Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Chief Minister of Nagaland Neiphiu Rio. The commission had approved a plan size of Rs 2,300 crore in 2012-13. "We have agreed on a plan size of Rs 2,000 crore, which is...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The government's ambitious manufacturing thrust has run into trouble even before it could take off with many states expressing difficulty in acquiring the vast tracts of land needed to set up dedicated zones. Five states have written to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, requesting it to consider revising the minimum land requirement (from existing 5,000 hectare) for developing National Manufacturing Investment Zones (NMIZs). These include Assam,...