The economist and political commentator who was appointed to a four-member team of the UN to recommend reforms to the global financial system critiques Budget 2010 Economist and political commentator Prabhat Patnaik, currently vice-chair of the Kerala Planning Board, is a strong critic of the government’s economic policies. In 2008, Patnaik, who has taught at JNU since the 1970s, was appointed to a four-member team of the UN to recommend...

South Asian nations including India would not be able to eradicate poverty and ensure minimum education for all by 2015, according to a new poverty index to be released next week in Delhi. The Basic Capabilities Index (BCI) 2009 has found that South Asia will get 80 points on the index by 2015, 10 points higher than the present value of 70. India has got 68 points in the index,...

Angus Deaton, the Princeton economist regarded as world's foremost authority on cross-country income data, has cast serious doubts on the World Bank's last upward revision of global poverty figures and India's statistics are at the centre of the storm. The world became poorer as a result of a combination of India's economic growth and its low poverty line, Deaton, who is president of the American Economic Association, said in his...

Dr U Jaikumaran is breathless with excitement over the phone. “The next five days will be hectic and crucial in our war against hunger. We have to transplant rice on 300 acres in just five days.” Dr Jaikumaran, a professor at the Kerala Agriculture University (KAU), has been building a Food Security Army (FSA) – men and women in green uniforms organised into nine regiments and 24 battalions – who are...

The poverty line that the Tendulkar Committee proposes depends on reduced calorie consumption, and fails to provide for reasonable household expenditures on schooling and health.  For some years, the Government of India has been under pressure to change the norms for calculating the official poverty line. Current norms have resulted in gross and manifest underestimation of the numbers of the poor, and, consequently, in the exclusion of hundreds of millions...