-The Economic Times   The Planning Commission, under a sustained attack from the Union Cabinet and the National Advisory Council over its affidavit to the Supreme Courtthat claimed that the rural poor can take care of his food, educational and health requirements with 25 a day, is expected to revise its stand on Monday. This follows a meeting between Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here...

The National Food Security Bill, 2011, designed to make access to food a legal right, is the last chance to convert Gandhiji's vision of a hunger-free India into reality. What Mahatma Gandhi said of the role of food in a human being's life in a 1946 speech at Noakhali, now in Bangladesh, remains the most powerful expression of the importance of making access to food a basic human right. Gandhiji also...

The Planning Commission's laughable estimates of the ‘poverty line' follow from a mistake in method that it made 30 years ago and has clung to ever since. The affidavit that the Planning Commission recently submitted before the Supreme Court stating that a person is to be considered ‘poor' only if his or her monthly spending is below Rs.781 (Rs.26 a day) in the rural areas and Rs.965 (Rs.32 a day) in...

-The Hindu Business Line   Input subsidy expenses not contributing to boost productivity The World Bank has said that South Asia's foodgrain stock management, especially in India, needs to improve to tackle inflation. In its focus on food inflation in South Asia, the bank said that high stocks have led to high wastage due to inadequate storage capacity and technology. According to World Bank's estimates, the Food Corporation of India lost 10-16 million tonnes...

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...