-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A Global consultancy firm pegged a new level for poverty or empowerment line - at Rs 1,336 per month per person as against the poverty line prescribed by the government at around Rs 870 per month per person. McKinsey, in a report, said the empowerment line determines the level of consumption required for an individual to fulfill his/her basic need for food, energy, housing, drinking water,...

-The Hindu Proposing a new "empowerment line" that aims to measure the minimum economic cost for a household to fulfil eight most basic needs, a global research organisation has estimated that 680 million Indians, or 56 per cent of the population, lacks the means to meet their essential needs. Health care, drinking water and sanitation between them account for nearly 40 per cent of the gap between their current status and the...

-The Business Standard The economic logic - and political reasons - behind the giant shift of spending power to the states Interim Budgets are not supposed to do this. This is precisely what they are not supposed to do. They are not supposed to lay out a policy change so vast it disempowers the next central government. But that's what P Chidambaram has done - and it appears to have been...

-Press Release Pension Parishad Pension Parishad members have decried the manner in which the UPA-II government is appeasing the credit rating agencies and captains of finance and industry while ignoring millions of elderly and deprived people of their right to social security in this country New Delhi, 17 February 2014: Describing the Interim Budget for 2014-15 "as an absolute let-down", Nikhil Dey, speaking on behalf of the Pension...

-Outlook The government today cut Rs 79,790 crore from the budgeted Plan expenditure of Rs 5,55,532 crore for the current financial year against the backdrop of a burgeoning fiscal deficit. The Interim Budget 2014-15, presented by Finance Minister P Chidambaram in Parliament, projected revised estimates of the Plan expenditure at Rs 4,75,532 crore for 2013-14. For the next financial year starting April 1, the government has kept the the Budget Estimates of Plan...