-The Times of India Jayati Ghosh is an economist specializing in globalisation and employment in developing nations. Speaking with Ashish Yechury, Ghosh discussed the controversy over defining poverty, ideas about economic growth - and a season of 'Marie Antoinette' economists: * What's your view of India's poverty line? It's very good the media's realised our poverty line is ridiculously low. These lines were developed 40 years ago in a very different social,...

-The Indian Express The proposed bill makes false promises. The need is to directly address problems of drinking water availability, sanitation, maternal health and childcare The Food Security Bill (2013, FSB) promulgated recently by an ordinance is expected to be debated in Parliament soon. The intention behind the FSB is noble, to eradicate hunger from the country, but the means adopted need serious reconsideration. FSB, under the targeted public distribution system (TPDS),...

-The Indian Express New Delhi: As rights groups upped the ante over the sheer insensitivity displayed by Delhi Police in issuing a fund raising advertisement, "depicting a vulnerable child as a future criminal", the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR) shot a notice to the Police Commissioner on Monday, demanding that the department take immediate steps to control the damage done with "the highly negative depiction of the IMAge...

Ashish Bose coined the term BIMARU in a paper to then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s to highlight the economic backwardness of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. He tells Somesh Jha he is not inspired by the Planning Commission’s bogus poverty figures. He says it is time the commission wound up. Excerpts:   * You coined the term 'BIMARU', but these states performed well in alleviating poverty in...

-The Indian Express The Gujarat model of development is not what its champions say it is Having realised that the people of India have not exonerated him for the post-Godhra killings of Muslims in 2002 on his watch, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi systematically tried to build up his IMAge as a "man of development"(vikas purush). The Sangh Parivar called it the "Gujarat model of development" and started propagating it. But what...