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...
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Study tracks how crime can translate into poll success
-The Indian Express An analysis of affidavits submitted by candidates in parliamentary and assembly elections since 2004 shows that a higher proportion of those with a criminal record were elected than from among those without such a record. The study found that only 12 per cent of those with a clean record won, which it described as their chances of winning, as against 23 per cent of those who a serious...
More »UP IAS officer who took on sand mafia suspended -Dipankar Ghose
-The Indian Express Noida (Uttar Pradesh): The Uttar Pradesh government on Sunday suspended an IAS officer who had taken on the sand mafia by clamping down on illegal mining in the Yamuna and Hindon riverbeds over the last few months. Durga Shakti Nagpal, a 2009-batch IAS officer posted as Sub Divisional Magistrate (Sadar) in Gautam Buddh Nagar, had impounded several trucks engaged in illegal quarrying and registered over 20 FIRs. The reason cited...
More »Nitish Kumar writes to Prime Minister seeking higher wages under NREGA -Urmi A Goswami
-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar is leveraging his politically 'unattached' status to seek higher wages for his people under the Centre's rural employment guarantee scheme. Kumar, being wooed by the Congress after he parted ways with the BJP, has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh saying that the state plans to raise NREGA payments to align them with the statutory minimum wage. "Notification of lower wage rates...
More »What the poverty numbers don’t say -Bhaskar Dutta
-The Indian Express What caused the steep fall in poverty reported by the Planning Commission? The evidence is mixed Earlier this week, the Planning Commission released estimates of the incidence of poverty in 2011-12. As in virtually the entire literature on the measurement of poverty in India, these estimates are based on data on per capita consumption expenditure collected by the National Sample Survey Organisation. The estimates show that there has been...
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