Days after he broke away from the NDA over choice of the presidential poll nominee, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar has managed to get the Centre to double the special assistance package to Rs 20,000 crore during the 12th five year (2012-17) plan. The state will get Rs 4,000 crore every year as central package. Although the assistance was promised at the time of its separation from Jharkhand, it was pegged at...

Bengal is staring at the possibility of losing self-sufficiency in rice unless the state manages to reverse a declining trend and step up production by as much as 12 per cent over the next four years. Lack of self-sufficiency in grain production need not necessarily be an alarming factor for a modern economy. But such a status is looming over Bengal in spite of factories not mushrooming on farmland — the...

In a bid to meet burgeoning housing requirements in cities and towns, the Union housing ministry is expected to set up a high-level committee to recommend policy interventions to facilitate creation of rental housing stocks to cater to those who cannot afford to buy houses.  Now, the housing shortage stands at around 27 million units, and estimates suggest that at least 50% is ascribed to people who cannot afford to own...

After the public outcry over the controversial Rs 28 a day poverty formulation, the Planning Commission has put the poverty debate in a deep freeze with the government setting up yet another expert group to take a relook at the existing methodology to determine the number of poor in the country. The decision, taken under public pressure, can be interpreted as rejection of the Tendulkar Committee report based on which the...

The Planning Commission has distanced itself from the government's decision to appoint a committee to reconsider the way poverty numbers are estimated, indicating a deep divide between the political masters and the technocrats at institution charged with laying down development agenda for the country. On Thursday, Minister for Planning Ashwini Kumar announced a committee under C Rangarajan, chairman of prime minister's economic advisory council, to review the widely criticised poverty estimates released...