-The Hindustan Times   Do these people look well-off to you? The planning commission puts them above poverty line. Basant Kumar, 51  Shopkeeper  Kusumpur Pahari slum,  Vasant Vihar, Delhi Daily expense: Rs 53   Basant Kumar runs a little shop in a slum in Vasant Vihar, home to over two lakh migrant families. He feeds and clothes his wife and three children on his meagre earnings of Rs5,000 a month. He also works odd-jobs, in construction or with...

-The Telegraph   Had it not been for a tub of hot water and a celebrated judge in England in 1949, Bengal’s Singur law may have found itself in legal hot water. Justice I.P. Mukerji, who delivered the Singur judgment, was guided by a 62-year-old English case that dealt with hot water supply by a landlord, according to the order issued on Wednesday. The Calcutta judge used the principle of “purposive interpretation”, which figured...

The Planning Commission's laughable estimates of the ‘poverty line' follow from a mistake in method that it made 30 years ago and has clung to ever since. The affidavit that the Planning Commission recently submitted before the Supreme Court stating that a person is to be considered ‘poor' only if his or her monthly spending is below Rs.781 (Rs.26 a day) in the rural areas and Rs.965 (Rs.32 a day) in...

Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi sold off his business in 2003 to do something relevant. The Indian Institute of Technology-Mumbai alumnus soon became a prolific user of the Right To Information Act and filed more than 800 RTI applications. He was appointed the Information Commissioner at the Central Information Commission, New Delhi, in 2008. In this freewheeling interview with rediff.com's Priyanka, Gandhi says that appellants must understand that law describes 'information' as something...

According to the Maharashtra government's own figures, 18,486 children in the age group of 0-6 years have died of malnutrition this year alone (Jan-August 2011). The figure is quite high, say health ministry sources. In 2010, 12,792 children had died of hunger and malnutrition during the same period. But this year, 5,694 more babies than last year have starved to death. Most of the dead babies are adivasi children. The...