-IANS   The ongoing enumeration for a socio-economic census in the country will not be affected by the poverty line cut-off spelled out by the Planning Commission, according to a senior rural development ministry adviser. The Planning Commission informed the Supreme Court Tuesday that poverty line could be provisionally placed at around Rs.32 a day per capita in urban areas and Rs.26 in rural areas. Manjula Krishnan, chief economic adviser in the minstry, said...

Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi sold off his business in 2003 to do something relevant. The Indian Institute of Technology-Mumbai alumnus soon became a prolific user of the Right To Information Act and filed more than 800 RTI applications. He was appointed the Information Commissioner at the Central Information Commission, New Delhi, in 2008. In this freewheeling interview with rediff.com's Priyanka, Gandhi says that appellants must understand that law describes 'information' as something...

The Union Government has prepared the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India Bill, 2001 (BRAI in brief) for the regulation of the biotechnology sector in India. While the need for strong and careful regulation certainly exists keeping in view the serious threats posed to health and environment by the genetically modified (GM) crops, the BRAI can actually increase this threat by paving the way for the rapid spread of GM crops...

The Planning Commission, headed by the prime minister, has filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court quantifying the daily poverty line for an adult as Rs 26 in rural, and Rs 32 in urban India. At today’s relentlessly increasing prices, Rs 26 will not get a manual worker even one nutritious meal a day — leave alone the 2,400 calories he is required to eat to enable him to work,...

Planning Commission affidavit not to be taken as the last word' An embarrassed government swung into damage control mode on Wednesday, in response to widespread criticism of an affidavit filed by the Planning Commission that suggested that an individual income of just Rs 25 a day constituted adequate “private expenditure on food, education and health,” at a time when even the minimum wage was pegged at over Rs.100 a day, the...