-The Hindu The move to redefine 'handloom' is in the interest of powerloom operators who will be able to corner benefits meant for weavers "Any loom, other than powerloom; and includes any hybrid loom on which, at least one process for weaving requires manual intervention or human energy for production." (The new definition of handloom proposed by Ministry of Textiles) The textile industry in India comprises three sectors - the mill, the powerloom and...

-Down to Earth The most controversial aspect of the food security law is the restructuring of the public distribution system to cover an unprecedented 67 per cent of the population, most of them in the poorer states. LATHA JISHNU, JYOTIKA SOOD and SUCHITRA M explain why there are winners and losers in the new dispensation and how states with better PDS will have to find huge resources to keep their numbers...

-Down to Earth Our policy makers should move away from the income criterion for estimating poverty and take cognisance of other indicators Amid mounting criticism and heated debates about the poverty line, a challenge has resurfaced to examine whether there could be a single non-monetary criterion of estimating poverty. A poverty line is a monetary cut-off point below which a person is deemed to be poor. Thus, any attempt to measure poverty...

-The Hindu Health activists demand public disclosure of maternal death reviews and the remedial action taken Twenty-two-year-old Kousalya (name changed), a Scheduled Caste woman in a remote village in Karnataka, was in an abusive marriage. She had suffered a late miscarriage in her first pregnancy and had been very careful with seeking antenatal care early in this pregnancy. She had moderate anaemia which was not identified or treated at the taluka hospital....

-The Indian Express     A degree of targeting is useful in ensuring that policies are effective in reducing poverty. But we have to be careful how this is done. With the right policies, India has a good chance of seeing accelerated poverty reduction in the coming decades. As I have previously argued, this will require that India does a better job in reaching the country's many poor people through its social policies. However,...