Statistical poverty lines should not become real-life eligibility criteria for food entitlements.  Nothing is easier than to recognise a poor person when you see him or her. Yet the task of identifying and counting the poor seems to elude the country's best experts. Take for instance the “headcount” of rural poverty — the proportion of the rural population below the poverty line. At least four alternative figures are available: 28...

The Centre has drafted a health bill to ensure the right to health. However, health experts feel the bill will, instead, legitimise denial of health services to the poor. The Draft National Health Bill 2009 was prepared on the recommendations of the National Human Rights Commission to recognise and operationalise the right to healthcare. The demand for such a right was led by the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, the Indian chapter...

The Kolkata Group is an independent initiative inspired and chaired by Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen. Once a year, it brings together participants drawn from various fields to explore the many inter-connections between inequality, deprivation, human development, and democracy. Its special focus has been on examining ways of advancing people’s health and education. The organisations supporting the Kolkata Group are UNICEF India, Professor Sen’s Pratichi Trust, and the Harvard-based Global...

Ban forward trading of wheat and rice and undertake de-hoarding measures urgently Make higher budgetary allocations for Primary Health Centres which need to be strengthened Worst hit by the prices of essentials, women groups on Tuesday presented their wish-list for the budget to the Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.“The spiralling rise in prices of essential commodities and inflation have had a particularly adverse impact on women, and on families from the more...

On January 2, 2010, three masked men barged into Pinki’s home in Tapodana village, Ranchi district and killed her parents on the charges of practicing witchcraft. Pinki, 14, and her younger brother are now in hiding because she too has been named as a dayan or witch. Sushila Devi, 45, tries to hide the injury on her head with her sari pallu as she describes how she and four other...