Statistical poverty lines should not become real-life eligibility criteria for food entitlements.  Nothing is easier than to recognise a poor person when you see him or her. Yet the task of identifying and counting the poor seems to elude the country's best experts. Take for instance the “headcount” of rural poverty — the proportion of the rural population below the poverty line. At least four alternative figures are available: 28...

The government is likely to raise the income threshold to define the economically weaker section (EWS) to about Rs 6,000 a month from the current Rs 3,300 a month. This will increase EWS numbers by almost 40 per cent. The EWS population benefits from government housing schemes and gets softer interest rates on housing loans from state-owned banks. The move to hike the threshold is based on an internal report...

Nearly 2 lakh farmers committed suicide in India since 1997. The share of big five states accounted for 1,22,823 suicides in this 12 year period. The data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau points out that 16,196 farmers in India ended their life in 2008. K Nagaraj, an economist, in his report Farmers' suicides in India: Magnitude, Trends and Spatial Patterns, says, "The title to land was taken as the...

Galloping food prices have shattered family budgets across the country, with latest inflation data showing that prices rose at nearly 18% in the week ending February 6. Many essentials of Indian kitchens are almost beyond reach; sugar is up by nearly 60%, pulses by 46% and potatoes by 53% over a year. In a country already suffering from chronic malnutrition and low incomes, this trend is a killer. President Pratibha...

A recent survey carried out by the TNUEF brings to light details of the discrimination Dalits in Madurai have faced for generations. OVER seven decades have rolled by since the freedom fighter A. Vaidhyanatha Iyer successfully led Dalits into the Meenakshi temple in Madurai, overcoming all the impediments posed by the casteist forces that were hell-bent on thwarting the historic event. But the stark reality is that “hidden apartheid” against...