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...

Monica Das Gupta is a senior social scientist at the World Bank. Her field research in Punjab, when she was at the National Council of Applied Economic Research, established that sex differentials in child mortality in rural Punjab persisted despite relative wealth, socio-economic development including rapid universalization of female education, fertility decline, and mortality decline. Amartya Sen’s writings drew attention to female foeticide and infanticide in Asia that led to...

The introduction of many new social welfare schemes could be delayed because the rural development ministry and the Planning Commission have yet to agree on a suitable new way to identify the poor, the main intended beneficiaries of these schemes. One key programme that is likely to be hit is the proposed National Food Security Act, which aims to provide every Indian family that lives below the poverty line (BPL) 25kg...

Women in 65 villages of Karnal  district, Haryana, have transformed their lives through self-help groups and microcredit schemes The infant mortality and maternal mortality rates have both come down substantially 94 per cent of the women now have ante- and post-pregnancy checks Institutional deliveries rising; anaemia in pregnant women down. No girl is married off before she’s 18 Taravanti clearly remembers the time, 19 years ago, when she got married...