Nowhere are the argumentative Indians more visible than in the cacophony surrounding poverty estimates. Poverty is declining; inequality is increasing; no one can live on Rs 28 a day; nine per cent of Indians are poor; 70 per cent of Indians are poor. Poverty is too important to be used as ping-pong between optimists and pessimists on the Indian economy. I am deeply disillusioned to discover that there are no certainties...

-IANS The World Bank has approved a $109 million funding for the Rajasthan Agricultural Competitiveness Project in India to enhance agricultural productivity through sustainable and efficient use of water resources. The project is expected to increase agricultural productivity and farmer Incomes through efficient water management, crop management, improved agricultural technology, farmer organizations and market innovations in some 20 selected areas in Rajasthan. The initiative will benefit some 155,000 smallholder farmers, the Washington-based World...

The purpose of this piece is not to defend the Planning Commission on poverty figures but to indicate that the methodologies have evolved over time after considerable research and they are useful for policy purposes if not for linking with entitlement programmes (some of us have written earlier that the poor and vulnerable are more numerous than the commission's poverty figures and these should be delinked from entitlement programmes).  The commission...

Consumption-based measures don’t accurately estimate poverty Since the publication of poverty estimates purportedly based on the Tendulkar methodology and the 2009-10 consumption survey of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), many in Parliament and outside, from different political parties, have questioned its conclusions. Concomitantly, media reactions have speculated on poverty’s relationship with fertility, growth, specific schemes, et al. But, India’s poverty, like itself, refuses to classify itself in simple boxes. Beyond the...

Source: PTI/IANS The World Bank has announced $4.3 billion in financial aid to India through a new innovative and flexible financing arrangement to help the country fight poverty. The arrangement, while facilitating a $4.3 billion increase in support to India, is designed to maintain International Bank for Reconstruction and Development's -- which is its lending arm -- net exposure within the limit of $17.5 billion established by it. In a statement, the World...