-The Economic Times world bank has said it will extend full financial support to India to help enhance the abysmal level of infrastructural development in the country in the 12th Five Year Plan that begins next fiscal.  The world bank president Robert B Zoellick, who begins his fifth and last official visit to India on Monday, has expressed intent to discuss innovative methods of financing with Indian leaders during his stay.  "India's needs...

Inequality in India is worsening and clearly following the US pattern India is a “relatively low-income inequality country” – to borrow an expression from a world bank publication – when compared to China or Brazil, but there is no doubt that disparities have been widening of late. Planning Commission officials have admitted that inequality has risen in the first decade of the new millennium, although the factors responsible for it need...

-PTI The world bank will not reduce financial assistance to India for poverty alleviation measures because of the recent official data that showed a decline in the number of poor people in the country. The international funding agency takes a long-term view on its commitments and the poverty data released on Monday will not have any bearing on that commitment, world bank Country Head, Mr N. Roberto Zagha, told PTI on the...

-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...

One man’s fiscal problem is another man’s lifeline. Trigger happy bureaucrats and economists may love shooting down subsidies because it bloats the fiscal deficit and burdens the government but the simple fact is that in a one billion strong nation, in which nearly one in every three live below the poverty line, one needs an effective and efficient method through which privileged tax payers can support the poor. Last week, finance...