-The Indian Express What caused the steep fall in poverty reported by the Planning Commission? The evidence is mixed Earlier this week, the Planning Commission released estimates of the incidence of poverty in 2011-12. As in virtually the entire literature on the measurement of poverty in India, these estimates are based on data on per capita consumption expenditure collected by the National Sample Survey Organisation. The estimates show that there has been...

-The Guardian Half of Indians have no toilet. It's one of many gigantic failures that have prompted Nobel prize-winning academic Amartya Sen to write a devastating critique of India's economic boom The roses are blooming at the window in the immaculately kept gardens of Trinity College, Cambridge and Amartya Sen is comfortably ensconced in a cream armchair facing shelves of his neatly catalogued writings. There are plenty of reasons for satisfaction...

-The Hindu "Why this selective concern about encounter killings in Gujarat - these happen all over the country," pleaded Gujarat's lawyer at a Supreme Court hearing of veteran journalist B.G. Verghese's public interest petition on 22 unexplained police killings in that state. When a 13-year-old boy was abducted from a Delhi jhuggi by Gujarat police officials on a whim, the State government's defence was first that the boy was Bangladeshi, next that...

-The Indian Express Why do women make better primary school teachers? If that question stumped many candidates who wrote the University Grants Commission's National Eligibility Test on Sunday, one of the multiple-choice answers listed for the question has outraged many. Because women "are available on lower salaries", said one of the four possible answers. About eight lakh candidates wrote the test across the country to qualify for junior research fellowships or university level...

-The Hindu New Delhi: Doctors of ayurveda and three other systems of medicine may be legally permitted to prescribe modern medicine under a controversial proposal from the Union health ministry that has angered sections of modern medics. The health ministry has asked state governments to take steps to allow state medical councils to enrol doctors with degrees in the traditional systems of medicine - ayurveda, unani, siddha, and homeopathy (AYUSH) - to...