To perpetuate a system that assigns a household to a single BPL/APL category in circumstances in which poverty is multi-dimensional is not only bad economics, but unconscionable as well.  The pilot surveys for the next Census of BPL (below-poverty-line) households are due to begin. Discussions are now on to finalise the methodology for the survey, and as the BPL Census is a matter of the subsistence and survival of hundreds...

Last summer, about 150 families of Kachan village in Jharkhand’s Palamu district decided to pool funds to repair their only community tube well. A drought, the worst in many years, had dried up two ponds; there were no wells around; and the tube well had been dysfunctional for a year. It took a lot of hardship and one whole month for them to put together what the mechanic had asked...

For no fault of theirs, the poor have given the government much trouble. Unlike Blacks or Women, two other classes of people chosen often for favours, the poor do not distinguish themselves; and if they are identified by means of external criteria, their characteristics can be faked or forged. The temptation to do so becomes overwhelming when the government gives favours — rations, jobs, places in schools, medical treatment —...

A meticulously researched book by A. Vaidyanathan, Agricultural Growth in India: Role of Technology, Incentives and Institutions, is an illuminating scholarly work. Thinking about it one realizes the dismal and declining state of Indian agriculture and the poor governance at both Central and state government levels that has brought it to this sorry pass. A valuable compendium of data and analysis of Indian agriculture since Independence, it is a valuable...

Today, we have reached a historic milestone in our country's struggle for children's right to education. The Constitution (86th Amendment) Act, 2002, making elementary education a Fundamental Right, and its consequential legislation, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, comes into force today. The enforcement of this right represents a momentous step forward in our 100-year struggle for universalising elementary education. Over the years, the demand...