-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...
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Vanishing poverty trick
-The Hindu In figures officially released this week, the Planning Commission claims that poverty incidence had declined from 37.2 per cent of the population in 2004-05 to 21.9 per cent in 2011-12. This 15.3 percentage points decline over a seven-year period amounts to an unprecedented annual decline of 2.2 percentage points in the poverty rate. If that trend is sustained, it would lead to an end to "official" poverty in India...
More »Rising temperatures, Excessive rainfall, heat extremes no longer distant risks: World Bank -Urmi A Goswami
-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Rising temperatures on account of checked climate change would lead longer warm spells, heat extremes by as much as one-fifth of South Asia's land mass, and a higher incidence of excess rainfall. These are no longer distant risks according to the World Bank. By 2040, unprecedented heat could affect more than 5% of South Asia's land mass. And if efforts to counter rising temperatures are not...
More »Lessons from Brazil’s Zero Hunger-Anurodh Lalit J
-The Hindu As India's parliamentarians continue to disrupt Parliament or the so-called "Temple of Democracy", the much anticipated National Food Security Bill (NFSB) has been put on the back burner. Consequently, millions of Indian will continue to sleep on empty stomach, tossing and turning all night dreaming for the day when eating food will not be a luxury anymore. Ironically, India presents a unique case of a country that, on the...
More »It’s turning blood red -Harsh Mander
-The Hindustan Times The audacious ambush and bloody massacre of more than two dozen political leaders and their security guards in Darbha valley of Sukma district in south Chhattisgarh, raises again profoundly important questions about the legitimacy of violence as an instrument to battle injustice and oppression. Resistance to injustice is widely endorsed as the highest human duty in most cultures, but the debate is about the legitimacy of deploying violence in...
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