‘Law needed to monitor selection of party candidates' West Bengal ahead of other four States which contested Assembly elections Despite promises of women's participation, mere134 of 1,263 candidates women Thirty-five per cent of the MLAs elected in the recently concluded Assembly elections in West Bengal have criminal cases pending against them as against an average of 33 per cent of those in the four other States that underwent Assembly elections, according to the...

How much poor is poor enough? If you ask this question to the Planning Commission of India, you might be highly disappointed at the response. Many of India 's poor die out of hunger and because they don't have acceptable Housing. Some of India 's poor even live in makeshift homes on train station platforms, an example of the 78 million Indians who lack proper Housing facilities. Still, according to...

The management of food and poverty in India is getting increasingly unreal. On the one hand, the country has a bumper harvest with every likelihood of the grain mountain to be procured adding to the existing mountain of official stocks. Without adequate storage space, a not-so-insignificant part of it will rot and go to waste. On the other hand, the government will not allow wheat exports until it is clear...

-The Economic Times   Everyone knows poverty is rampant in India, but nobody knows exactly how many of us are poor. That's because we've tried to count the poor many times with different assumptions, and come up with widely different numbers. In 2004-05, the Planning Commission reckoned that only 27% of Indians were poor. This was debunked by a committee headed by Suresh Tendulkar in 2009, which pegged the number of poor...

The government's acquisition of land for projects has been facing protests across the country, the violence in Uttar Pradesh [ Images ] being only the latest. As people's power collides with public projects, MR Madhavan explains what land acquisition is all about What is Land Acquisition? Land acquisition is the process by which the government forcibly acquires private property for public purpose without the consent of the land-owner. It is thus...