The NREGS is restricted. The PDS is targeted. Only exploitation is universal. The rotting of lakhs of tonnes of foodgrain in open yards, while shocking, is hardly new or surprising. Remember the rural poor marching on godowns in Andhra Pradesh in 2001 in similar circumstances? The Supreme Court was quite right in jolting the Union government. “In a country where admittedly people are starving, it is a crime to waste even...
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Fruits of reform have failed to reach the poor by Vinay Pandey
The top 20% of India’s population has a more than 50% share of the national income in 2009-10, up from 36.7% in 1993-94, says a study by the National Council for Applied Economic Research, or NCAER. This would seem to confirm the charge that income disparities have increased in the reform years, 1991 onwards, and the rich have got richer as a freer economy has created more opportunities. According to...
More »‘Disclosure of minister’s assets is PMO’s call’
The executive on Monday lost another excuse to prevent disclosure of ministers' assets after the Lok Sabha Secretariat rejected a request from the Prime Minister's Office seeking the legislature's permission. The LS secretariat declined the request saying the RTI Act does not have any provision for giving such "clearances''. This means the PMO has to take a call on whether details of ministers' Wealth should be disclosed or not. Incidentally,...
More »Half of India’s population lives below the poverty line by Arun Kumar
According to a new Oxford University study, 55 percent of India’s population of 1.1 billion, or 645 million people, are living in poverty. Using a newly-developed index, the study found that about one-third of the world’s poor live in India. The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) has been developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as a more precise and comprehensive means of...
More »The field's wide open by Rajdeep Sardesai
Mani Shankar Aiyar has probably not read Dale Carnegie's best-seller, How to Win Friends and Influence People. A few years ago, in a St Stephens alumni register, former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh wrote, "I am what I am because of the college". Prompt came Aiyar's rejoinder: "Why blame the college!" Politics though is not a college campus. The ready wit and pungent sarcasm which might earn applause in a debating...
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