The Planning Commission, headed by the prime minister, has filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court quantifying the daily poverty line for an adult as Rs 26 in rural, and Rs 32 in urban India. At today’s relentlessly increasing prices, Rs 26 will not get a manual worker even one nutritious meal a day — leave alone the 2,400 calories he is required to eat to enable him to work,...

-The Hindu   Tamil Nadu Chief Minster Jayalalithaa on Wednesday announced that the State Cabinet would adopt a resolution seeking suspension of work on the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP), prompting antagonists of the plant to declare withdrawal of their 11-day fast. Ms. Jayalalithaa, who met representatives of the protesters at the Secretariat for nearly an hour, told them that the Cabinet would meet on Thursday and adopt a resolution calling for the...

-IANS   The CPI-M on Wednesday denounced the proposed Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority Bill and asked the government to "set up a genuinely independent nuclear safety regulatory authority". "By bringing such a bill (in parliament), the government has shown its utter disdain for the people's genuine fears about safety in the nuclear sector," the Communist Party of India-Marxist said in a statement. "The CPI-M demands that the government scrap this bill and...

-The Hindu   “The sector has over 345 reactor years of safe operation” In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident, the emergency response and preparedness measures in India's nuclear facilities had been strengthened and several recommendations of the safety reviews mandated by the government of India had already been implemented, said Srikumar Banerjee, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), on Wednesday. A road map was being prepared for implementing the other recommendations. Addressing the...

-PTI   Urging state governments not to 'fail the poor', Prime Minister manmohan singh on Wednesday said the country had still to realise the 'full potential' of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) whose implementation had been 'uneven across states'. "We still have miles to go before we achieve the full potential of this unique legislation in annals of recent history. The performance of the programme, as I have mentioned, has been...