-The Hindustan Times About 1.98 lakh farmers committed suicide in India between 2001 and 2012 as the benefits of high growth failed to trickle down to the rural areas, says the India Rural Development Report 2012-13 released on Thursday. Indebtedness and lenders confiscating land have been attributed as the main causes of the farmers' deaths. Around two-third of the farmer suicides were reported from Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Depicting the...

-Economic and Political Weekly A comparison of the consumption expenditure and associated nutritional intake data for 2009-10 with that of 2004-05 shows worsening poverty in terms of the percentage of people unable to reach the minimum required calories energy intake through their monthly spending on all goods and services. This result must be seen in the context of neo-liberal policy, the financial crisis and consequent global recession affecting export production, the...

-eSocialSciences.com Presented are estimates of the impact of India's Public Distribution System on rural poverty, using National Sample Survey data for 2009-10 and official poverty lines. At the all-India level, the PDS is estimated to reduce the poverty-gap index of rural poverty by 18 to 22 percent. The corresponding figures are much larger for states with a well-functioning PDS, e.g. 61 to 83 per cent in Tamil Nadu and 39 to...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: An expert panel has ranked Gujarat 12th among states in development, its findings flying in the face of Narendra Modi's claims but winning endorsement from economists The Telegraph spoke to. The committee, headed by Raghuram Rajan who has since been appointed Reserve Bank governor, assessed states on the basis of 10 criteria, which included many human development indicators. Bengal came 16th. Economist and Planning Commission member Abhijit Sen, who...

-Press Information Bureau The India Rural Development Report 2012/13 was released here by Shri Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Rural Development, Government of India. The Report was prepared by IDFC Foundation in collaboration with network partners, the Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), the Institute for Rural Management Anand (IRMA), and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), with contributions from several other researchers, experts and civil society organisations. On...