-The Times of India   Faced with fierce criticism over the Planning Commission’s new criteria for Poverty Line, the Government has asked the Plan panel to revise its affidavit. The Planning Commission had said that that those spending more than Rs. 32 a day in urban areas, or Rs. 26 a day in villages, would no longer be eligible to draw benefits meant for those living below the Poverty Line. The new tentative...

-The Business Standard   After generating much controversy back home on the Planning Commission's “unrealistic definition” of Poverty Line, India had to field some tough queries in Washington over the matter. Chief Economic Advisor Kaushik Basu said the government was looking at various parameters of poverty estimates to provide better coverage to the vulnerable section through a proposed food law. "...now we are going to go into a new food security programme, where we...

A week after the Planning Commission submitted to India’s top court an affidavit on its assessment of who the poor are, several leading economists have urged the government to delink food entitlements from what they call “faulty” poverty measures. Last week, in an affidavit to the Supreme Court, India’s apex planning body said the spending threshold per capita for the Poverty Line was Rs.32 per day (per person) in cities and...

Updating the Poverty Line cutoff figures, the Planning Commission said that those spending in excess of Rs 32 a day in urban areas or Rs 26 a day in villages would no longer be eligible to draw benefits for those living below the Poverty Line. TOI broke down the overall monthly figure for urban areas and used the CPI for industrial workers along with the Tendulkar committie report figures to see...

-The Indian Express   In the backdrop of adverse reactions against Poverty Lines filed by the Planning Commission in the Supreme court this week, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has described the below Poverty Line (BPL) household identification methodology “approved by the Cabinet” as “least justifiable on political grounds” and a “sure recipe for political confrontation”. At the same time, he has conceded that it was the one with “best acceptability as far...