-Frontline The midday meal scheme is a grand idea in a flawed school system. "THEY played here, studied here and got buried here!" (Yahin khela, yahin padha aur yahin ho gaya dafan). With these emphatic words, grieving parents buried the bodies of two children within the compound of the Dharmasati Gandaman Primary School of Masharakh block in Saran district of Bihar. This sentiment was expressed with great dignity even in the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Taking on the rampant money and muscle power in politics, a new political party, Nav Bharat Democratic Party, was launched on Thursday, promising clean candidates and transparent democracy. The party helmed by a motley group of professions, including a retired naval officer, entrepreneurs, lawyers and others, promised to provide an accountable government. The party will field candidates, including working professionals, entrepreneurs and veteran politicians, weaned away...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Eliminating Planning Commission's role in etching the poverty line and instead tasking expert government agencies to determine India's below poverty line population may help depoliticize the exercise, a former top NSSO official has said. Former director-general of National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) Jogeshwar Dash feels the Planning Commission's mandate of framing policy clashes with estimating poverty ratios that are an outcome of strategies the panel devises. "Poverty...

-The Hindustan Times * What is a poverty line? The poverty line defines a threshold income. Households earning below this threshold are considered poor. Different countries have different methods of defining the threshold income depending on local socio-economic needs. * Who brings out the poverty estimates in India? The Planning Commission releases the poverty estimates in India. * How is it measured? Poverty is measured based on consumer expenditure surveys of...

-The Economic Times The Union Government has proposed to provide land to the landless. Nearly half of the country's rural population is absolutely or relatively landless, according to the National Land Reform Policy Draft 2013 formulated by Union Ministry of Rural Development released on July 18 open for discussion and comments till August 31, the policy is going to face opposition from farmers' organisations as it proposes to take away excess...