A woman, as everyone knows, usually gives birth to a baby after nine months of pregnancy, but in Bihar 298 women claim to have delivered two to five children in a span of 60 days - at least that's what records of incentives amount given to new mothers under a government scheme show. A woman gets around Rs.1,000 when she gives birth under the government's Janani Suraksha Yojana but a...
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Why you must read this censored chapter by Raman Kirpal
A RESEARCHER WORKING on the State of Panchayats Report (SOPR) 2008-09 met Mahangu Madiya in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district, a dangerous place for gathering data. Madiya’s story was startling. In January, he was given Rs 55 lakh compensation for his land, but the amount is sitting in his bank account. He does not even own a mobile phone. “I am concerned with farming. My land is important to me. What will I...
More »Requests of information acceded by CIC by Prakash Kamat
A full bench of the Central Information Commission headed by Chief Central Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has recently held that while all proceedings before the Parliamentary Committees (PC) are no doubt held secret, it cannot be stretched to mean that every single item of information, held anywhere, that may, now or in future, become part of the proceedings before the PC, or may be required to be produced before the...
More »Food inflation hit war on poverty by Chetan Chauhan
Rising food prices and economic crisis have eaten into the gains made by India and the world in reducing poverty during the first half of this decade, a United Nations report released on Wednesday said. "Newly updated estimates from the World Bank suggest the crisis will heave an some 64 million into extreme poverty by end of 2010, principally in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia," the Millennium Development Goals, 2010 report...
More »Poverty rate in India will dip to 24% by ’15
The number of poor people in India is expected to halve by 2015, according to the 2010 Millennium Development Goals report released on Wednesday. The poverty rate in the country is slated to decline from 51% of the population in 1990 to 24% over the next five years. That translates into around 188 million more people meeting a minimum subsistence standard of $1.25 a day—the benchmark for the report's findings....
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