-TheWire.in Based on a militarised notion of ‘targeting’, such welfare policies deny citizens the right to basic services. In an incisive analysis on anti-poverty and other social security programmes, Professor Amartya Sen astutely asks why the notion of targeting, which is essentially a military concept, is so routinely invoked in analytical discourses on basic welfare rights for the people as well as in policy framing in this respect. Indeed, why would an...

-Tehelka.com Learning from the recent starvation deaths in Jharkhand, the nation’s leaders must pay heed to the necessity of ensuring food security for all Food and hunger have been important issues this past month and the news has not been welcome. First it was India’s dismal rank in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2017 released by the International Policy Research Institute rankings — 100th among 119 countries. GHI looks at undernourishment, child...

-Firstpost.com The first ever Gender Vulnerability Index (GVI), developed by Plan India, a non-governmental organisation, indicates that Goa is the safest for women and girls while Bihar ranked the lowest for their safety and security. The GVI is a composite index developed for a study for Plan India’s ‘Plan for Every Child’ – a campaign that is targetted at understanding the problems that women and girls face in difficult circumstances. The report...

-Down to Earth The next generation of the current poor Indians has high probability of remaining poor as well. Lack of access to resources like forests and social discrimination have set in the dreaded chronic poverty among India’s socially marginalised groups, ironically the target of poverty eradication programmes since last 70 years Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to eradicate poverty in India by 2022, or in the next five years, is...

-Scroll.in An analysis of data shows that the Gujarat model is a bubble waiting to burst. The Gujarat economy continues to be an enigma. In 2014, many considered the state’s economic performance nothing short of miraculous and credited it to the magic touch of Narendra Modi, then the four-term chief minister of the state. This even led to the coinage of a new term: Modinomics. Three years later, as Gujarat heads...