Critics are wrong when they say poverty has not declined. However, they are right, unknowingly though, when they say that the Planning Commission has not been entirely forthcoming about how it arrived at the poverty estimates it put out last week. The commission seems to have quietly tweaked the consumption data for 2009-10 used to estimate poverty. Hence, not only has it undercounted the poor in 2009-10 by some 18 million,...

Trying—and failing—to live on the govt’s definition of ‘not poor’ Dietetics Of Poverty     Three cups of tea, adding up to about 150 calories     Two slices of bread (100 calories)     Two pieces of kulcha with chhole (about 425 calories)     Bread and tea hardly contain any nutrients. Milk may provide some calcium.     Near-starvation diets, with hardly any vitamins or minerals, can lead to a breakdown of muscles and weight loss over a...

India’s decision-makers seem to find it difficult to see that there are children in the country. Being unable to see them, they are unable to perceive that they are hungry. In an age when we are able to use euphemisms like ‘under-nutrition’, this is perhaps not surprising. But it is disgraceful none the less.   This country has a large population of children. Fortyone per cent of its total numbers. The national...

‘Use of locally available food can go a long way in keeping children healthy' Going local on food consumption is the way to keep children healthy. This simple truth – based as much on traditional wisdom as it is on scientific principle – is the message of the committee set up to address child malnutrition in Karnataka, which has prescribed a “feeding protocol” for children of different age groups, pregnant women...

-The Business Standard   The agriculture minister is right about food security Among the large number of disparagers of the government’s proposed food security law, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has been the most relentless, and also among the most outspoken. His latest salvo, expressing misgivings about its smooth implementation without investing more on boosting food production, is as relevant as the objections he had raised earlier concerning its impact on the already fragile...