-The Hindu Although the SECC’s objectives are not likely to be met, it is a big step towards providing accurate information on the well-being of the people. The release of data for rural households from the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) is only the latest step in India’s tortured history of trying to count its poor. The idea behind the SECC was technocratic. Commissioned by the United Progressive Alliance in 2011,...
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Govt. looking for common ground to break impasse over Land Bill -Puja Mehra
-The Hindu ‘The options will allow both sides to claim victory’ Following directions from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), “thinking heads” in the Modi government have begun to formulate a strategy for breaking the impasse in the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) over the controversial Land Acquisition Bill. Options are being discussed to find a meeting ground for the government and the Opposition parties on three contentious provisions of the Bill — the consent...
More »Sunita Narain, director general, Centre for Science and Environment, interviewed by Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta & Venkitesh Ramakrishnan
THE controversy over Maggi instant noodles has once again highlighted the issues plaguing food safety in India. Not only does the issue raise critical questions about safe food production by multinational companies such as Nestle but it also foregrounds the institutional fault lines when it comes to ensuring food safety. Frontline spoke to Sunita Narain, who heads the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the organisation instrumental in initiating...
More »Tribal alienation in an unequal India -Mihir Shah
-The Hindu Thanks to the caste system, India has always been an unequal society. What is even more worrying is that inequality appears to have deepened in the past two decades The Boston Consulting Group’s 15th annual report, “Winning the Growth Game: Global Wealth 2015”, has received extensive coverage in the Indian media. The report comes on top of the Global Wealth Databook 2014 from Credit Suisse, which provides a much more...
More »SECC reveals two Indias, but government refuses to disclose caste data -Iftikhar Gilani
-DNA OBCs make upto 66.48% of the total 17.92 crore rural households – much higher than 54% decided by the Mandal Commission in 1980 Even as the Union government shied away from releasing the caste data collected in 2011, the rural socio-economic survey data put out on Friday speaks of two Indias – that of the affluent and the poor. Around 73 % of the country's people live in villages, with the...
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