-The Asian Age   Amidst the high voltage campaign to tom-tom Bihar’s achievements for registering an unprecedented growth rate of 13.13 per cent for the year-2011-12, there exists a dark story. Almost half of the state’s population still lives below poverty line (BPL). According to sources in the Planning Commission, the background note, prepared by the panel for the Plan (2012-13) discussion with Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday, around 48 per...

-The Times of India HYDERABAD: Nithin Gollamudi, a city student dreams to be a doctor and secretly wants to be the state topper in medical entrance examination. Belonging to an economically and socially backward family, the 12-year-old who was helping his father in a masonry shop in Chotuppal till two years ago even while going to a nearby government school says that it would have been impossible for him to dream...

-The Economic Times Imagine a rural family of five. Mom. Dad. Two kids. And Grandma. Assume too that they are below the poverty line. The day is coming when this family will have to give its biometrics out to myriad agencies.  You know that Nandan Nilekani's Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) or the Registrar General's National Population Register (NPR) has been collecting biometrics for a while now.  But a set of other...

-IANS The government wants to plug leakages in the public distribution system (PDS) before it implements the ambitious National Food Security Bill and has asked states to complete the process of computerisation of data on beneficiaries by October this year. The proposed law, a pet project of United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi, aims to give legal right to cheaper foodgrain to 63.5 per cent of the population. According to a senior official...

Any move by the government to dump the public distribution system for supply of food items to the poor is likely to face a tough challenge from various NGOs, which are planning to move the Supreme Court seeking its intervention in the matter. Armed with a survey report in by NGO, Lok Shakti Manch in various slum clusters in Delhi on whether PDS should be substituted with transfer of cash to...