In April, India’s Planning Commission accepted recommendations put forth by the so-called Tendulkar Committee on a new poverty headcount for the country. Constituted by the Planning Commission under economist Suresh D Tendulkar, the committee, after four years and a new methodology, arrived at a new figure for the number of Indians living below the poverty line: 37.2 percent, ten points higher than the previous official figure. With the government’s subsequent...

A panel of experts that sets the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance administration’s social agenda is likely to reject a draft law to offer cash compensation to the poor, who do not receive their quota of subsidized foodgrain. Members of the National Advisory Council (NAC), which is led by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, insisted during a Thursday meeting that the entitlement should be universal, instead of being restricted to families below the...

The question of whether it is possible to move — and how swiftly — towards universalising food entitlements under the proposed National Food Security Act, dominated the second meeting of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) here on Thursday, NAC sources told TheHindu. Universalising food entitlements will hinge on availability of food grains, and on whether the exchequer is in a position to bear additional cost of food subsidy...

Conservatives appeared to trump the “radicals” as the Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council met today to consider revolutionary suggestions to widen the content and targets of a proposed “right to food” law. The food rights campaigners in the council wanted a targeted public distribution system (PDS) to cover all except the affluent, providing not just cheap cereals but also other requirements of nursing mothers, children, the aged and the physically challenged. The...

Furious debates among policymakers about the proposed national food security law largely revolve around its financial repercussions. The Planning Commission is finally coming around to accepting the Tendulkar Committee’s estimates of 37.2 per cent BPL population or 8.5 crore BPL households. The fiscal burden in implementing the food security law for 37.5 per cent BPL population, with each household being provided 35 kg food grains, is estimated to be Rs...