India's anxiety over erratic monsoon rains will become more acute as rising incomes and a growing population push up demand for farmed produce faster than supply, turning the nation into a major importer within 5 years. Forecasts of a normal monsoon this year have stirred hopes for smooth supplies and low inflation, reversing setbacks from last year's poor rains. But the country must boost yields if it is to feed...

Activist Gopal Krishna makes a case that the Unique Identification Number project is a gross violation of fundamental human rights and points out that a similar project/law in Britain is going to be repealed. This is with reference to a privacy invasion project which is relevant to India and all the democratic countries of the world. The very first bill that is to be presented by the UK's new coalition...

With the proposed food security law likely to get a momentum after the formal constitution of the National Advisory Council (NAC), under the chairmanship of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the Rural Development Ministry has also decided to speed up the process for identification of rural below poverty line (BPL) families. In this context, the ministry has decided to conduct pilot studies across the country for fine tuning the parameters required...

Poverty estimates stumble on differing definitions of the household for statistical and policy purposes Officially, the Planning Commission accepted the Tendulkar committee’s report on revision of poverty estimates after the empowered group of ministers on food security asked the commission to issue a final estimate of poverty in the country. Despite the commission’s acceptance, the ministerial group asked it for another estimate of poor households. The simple reason is that the...

Suresh Tendulkar created a flutter among policymaking circles when a committee led by him raised the estimate for poor households in the country to 74 million from the Planning Commission estimate of 65.2 million. The former chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council explained why his numbers are more credible in an interview with ET’s Pooja Suri and Amiti Sen. Excerpts: Why did your committee decide to accept the...