-The Indian Express SECC opens the door to step away from the poverty line as a criterion for government benefits. The Government of India has just released data from the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011. It is perhaps the most ambitious exercise of this kind ever conducted in human history. The SECC 2011 has three parts: census of rural India, conducted by the Union ministry of rural development (MoRD), census...

-The Indian Express   Socio-economic census data provides valuable pointers — and reality checks — for policymakers    The socio-economic and caste census (SECC) 2011 paints a picture of rural India weighed down by landlessness and lack of non-farm jobs. More than 60 per cent of the 17.91 crore rural households covered under the census qualified as deprived on 14 parameters. This is a set of people who do not own a two-wheeler...

-The Hindu At present, the subsidy is paid to urea producers and importers, not farmers. Consensus continues to elude the Centre on the politically sensitive reform of the urea sector, where it has accumulated an unpaid subsidy bill of Rs. 40,000 crore. Prime Minister Narendra Modi presided over a meeting of senior Ministers and officials last Tuesday, which discussed if the subsidy could be provided directly to farmers through the direct benefit transfer...

-TheWire.in   The newly released UNESCO e-atlas on out-of-school children (OOSC) provides worrying evidence not only of the low priority being accorded to basic education across developing countries, but also by the developed world in terms of the aid given to education. As many as 124 million children and adolescents worldwide are out of school, 17.7 million – or 14 per cent – of whom are Indian. The rise in the number...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A UN report has projected steady decline in prices of foodgrains over the next decade, attributing the gradual price fall to increase in overall agricultural production and diversification of dietary choices towards meat and dairy products. The report, released last week, however, emphasized that prices of foodgrains would not fall below early 2000-levels "despite the advantageous scenario regarding global food pricing". It noted that additional agricultural...