-The Economic Times The country's main planning body on Thursday said it will take a re-look at the just-released poverty figures, which have drawn widespread criticism for its criteria and even elicited concern from the prime minister. The Planning Commission said it will set up a new technical group in the next three months to re-visit the Suresh Tendulkar methodology of estimating poverty and devise a new measure of poverty that will...

-The Business Standard Public discussion on falling poverty hits a new low The Lok Sabha was adjourned for a short duration on Wednesday following an uproar over the government’s latest figures for poverty. This follows widespread public outrage at those figures. A dispassionate observer of this discussion may be led to conclude that either poverty has risen dramatically or the government has somehow fudged the figures inexcusably and obviously. Elsewhere perhaps,...

Montek Singh says he is willing to revise poverty estimates on the basis of expert opinion Though the incidence of poverty has come down over five years from 2004-05 to 2009-10, it is a startling fact that inequality has increased, with fewer people controlling income. Union Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia admitted on Tuesday that income distribution was not at the desired level and inequality increased in both rural and...

-The Times of India Even as the opposition accused the government of tampering with poverty figures, Planning Commission stuck to its stand that poverty had declined by 7.3% between 2004-05 and 2009-10, a period when the Congress-led UPA has been in power. "You can put whatever poverty line you want, the fact is... the decline in poverty is twice the decline in the previous 11 years," Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh...

The UPA-II has used the Budget to again play politics with hunger. But it has paid no heed to the ticking time bomb of growing social tensions as 58 million Indians living off agriculture slide deeper into poverty. The Economic Survey says more than half the population is dependent on a sector whose share in the economy is shrinking. The urban-rural income divide is therefore steadily widening, a tinder box that...