The Planning Commission, the country’s apex planning body, is gradually reconciling to the fact that there would be no large gains in the gross budgetary support (GBS) in budget 2010-11, as the government struggles to reduce fiscal deficit. GBS is the money the Union government allocates to various government programmes through the Union budget. “The major objective of the finance ministry is to bring down the fiscal deficit from 6.8% of...
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Poverty, beyond calories by Savvy Soumya Misra
New method finds India is 9 per cent poorer india is poorer than previously estimated. A revised estimation of poverty for 2004-05 using new methodology showed the number of people below the poverty line was 37.2 per cent and not 28.3 per cent, as estimated earlier. The new estimate took into account expenditure on food, basic health and education, unlike the earlier estimation based on per capita calorie consumption. The inclusions...
More »The gap widens by Shailaja Chandra
Several recent reports put India at the bottom when it comes to gender equality. It is time for a clearly-spelt new policy on women and development. SHAILAJA CHANDRA “By and large the attitude of a man towards his wife is possibly worse than his attitude towards his buffalo.”--Colin Gonzalves, Human Rights Lawyer The World Economic Forum, in a report titled the Global Gender Gap 2009, has quantified the magnitude of gender-based...
More »The unsettled debate on Indian poverty by R Ramakumar
The Tendulkar Committee has pitched for a policy position that is stranded between the harsh realities of poverty and a fiscally conservative neo-liberal framework. The debate on the extent of poverty in India has been a matter of global interest in the recent years. The primary reason for the global interest in the debate is that the levels of poverty in India and China have come to exert significant influence...
More »Hard Times by Ashok Mitra
Food prices have shot up by more than 20 per cent in the course of the past 12 months. A vast proportion of the nation is being battered by the price rise — the fixed income group, the working classes, landless peasantry and small farmers who have to buy at least a part of the grains they consume from the market. There is, however, no upheaval among the suffering people....
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