-The Times of India   Facing a political storm over its poverty line prescription, the government decided to revise the Rs 32 a day expenditure criteria for urban population (Rs 26 for rural) by factoring in the 2009-10 National Sample Survey Organization report on household spend. The pittance outlined in the Planning Commission affidavit before the Supreme Court left the government squirming as the BJP and Left attacked it for framing poverty guidelines...

-The Times of India   The Haryana government introduced a policy to provide security to whistleblowers and RTI activists in the state if they report to police of specific threats. The state home department issued a notification on this on Tuesday. State home secretary Samir Mathur told TOI that the scale of security cover would depend on the nature of threat perception. "We can provide a cop or a gunman or even a...

A report from a sample survey of the functioning of the public distribution system in 12 villages in two districts in Orissa, a state usually associated with a poor PDS. While there are errors in exclusion and inclusion of households covered, there has been a vast improvement in operation of the PDS; below the poverty line households seem to be receiving their entitlements. The households also express a strong preference...

The flawed Bill on food security has not received the kind of publicity that the Lokpal Bill has, but that does not diminish its significance. “THIS government has divided everything and everyone. There are different cards for different sections of the poor. If my employer, taking pity on me, gives me an old television, I am not entitled to a yellow card [Below Poverty Line card]. My son who is...

What is government planning to do with the Public Distribution System (PDS)? The answer lies in an old adage: Give a dog bad name and hang him! The common impression is that the PDS is not working because of pilferage and hence it is taken as a foregone conclusion that it needs to be replaced with cash transfer. Two empirical studies conducted recently, one of them by noted economists Jean Dreze...