Methodology error, intentionally manipulated data of poor quality and perilous local level political partiality is making the life of poor miserable and proved time and again that ‘any initiative for the poor tends to be a poor initiative.’ The erroneous way of assessing multi-dimensional indicators for locating the poor without making any distinction between facilities self-created by someone against facilities created through government schemes is nothing but an attempt to hide...

There are two messages, one good, the other, bad, in the latest poverty numbers released by the government. The good news first. It is obvious that poverty has declined in aggregate terms, both in rural and urban India. At a national level, it has declined by 7.4 percentage points from 37.2% in 2004-05 to 29.8% in 2009-10; rural poverty, over the same period, has declined from 41.8% to 33.8%, and urban...

The first-ever India Human Development Awards Manav Vikas were announced in New Delhi. Kottayam in Kerala, Khargone in Madhya Pradesh; Udupi in Karnataka and Malda in West Bengal have been recognized for excellence in the quality of Human Development Reports for their districts. The overall award for excellence went to West Bengal with two districts amongst the eight finalists.  The Manav Vikas India Human Development Awards, instituted by the Planning Commission...

India doubled the pace at which it has been reducing poverty in rural areas in the five years to 2009-10 by moving around 47 million over the so-called poverty line. Interestingly, the five years to 2009-10 also saw India grow the fastest in any five-year period in the past, at an average of 8.7%. In the same period, 5 million people in urban India moved above the poverty line. The numbers...

-The Hindu   Low Muslim representation appears to be a striking feature of this year's admissions to nursery classes in Delhi's private schools. Of 92 schools which provided some sort of information on their websites, as many as 20 (or their branches) admitted no Muslim child while 17 admitted only one Muslim child each. While the sketchy nature of available data – with only a few schools willing to reveal the numbers of...