The way has been cleared for public access to the data collected by Union government ministries and departments, with official approval being accorded to the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP). Following its recent approval by the Union Cabinet, the policy has been notified and is in the process of being gazetted, said R. Siva Kumar, CEO of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, and head of the Natural Resources Data...

Critics are wrong when they say poverty has not declined. However, they are right, unknowingly though, when they say that the Planning Commission has not been entirely forthcoming about how it arrived at the poverty estimates it put out last week. The commission seems to have quietly tweaked the consumption data for 2009-10 used to estimate poverty. Hence, not only has it undercounted the poor in 2009-10 by some 18 million,...

-The Pioneer The Planning Commission will constitute an expert group in three months to revisit the methodology for estimating poverty amid demand for removal of its Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia for pegging the poverty line at Rs 28.65 daily per capita consumption for cities and Rs 22.42 in rural areas. “The Government had taken a decision to set up a technical group to revisit the methodology for estimating poverty in a...

-The Hindu Food subsidies for poorest will help them cope: ADB A hike in the cost of food staples like rice and wheat could push tens of millions more people into extreme poverty in the South Asian region including India, says an Asian Development Bank (ADB) report. The Manila-based lending agency, in its report “Food Price Escalation in South Asia – A Serious and Growing Concern” released on Monday, however, said that food...

-The Times of India The Centre on Thursday junked the Planning Commission's poverty definition with PM Manmohan Singh saying that there was a need to devise another method. "We need a multi-layered approach to assess poverty estimates. The Tendulkar Committee estimates have been followed for 30 years but not an inclusive estimate. It (Tendulkar report) is not satisfactory," Singh said on the sidelines of the Padma Awards function. A new team will devise...