-The Hindu Notional poverty line will stand at a per capita expenditure of around Rs. 50 per day in rural areas and Rs. 62 in urban areas While the Opposition pillories the Planning Commission for using a formal definition of poverty that ensures the percentage of people below the poverty line is lower than what it ought to be, the government has begun moving to a broader and more realistic de facto...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre is planning to increase cash incentives for private builders willing to construct houses for economically weaker sections in partnership with it. Under the Affordable Housing in Partnership Scheme floated in 2009, the Centre was to pay private builders Rs 50,000 per dwelling unit or 25 per cent of the cost of civic services, whichever was less. Since the scheme found few takers, it is planning to...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Eminent citizens including former Delhi high court chief justice A P Shah, former CABinet secretary TRS Subramanian and former information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi have urged parliamentarians not to sign amendments to the RTI act when it is tabled. The government plans to bring amendments to the act to exclude political parties. The letter says that the RTI act has been used to uncover "certain arbitrariness and...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Centre intends to exempt political parties from RTI scrutiny on the ground that they are not "substantially funded" by the government and so are not required to reveal details such donors and other funding sources. The government expects to consult political parties to firm up a consensus on undoing the Central Information Commission order putting parties under the ambit of the Right to Information Act...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has got a reluctant railways on board for its ambitious bill seeking a blanket ban on manual scavenging. The Prohibition of Empowerment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill, 2012, which was cleared last week by the CABinet, had been pending for over a year because the railways did not want to be part of it. The largest public carrier had...