-The Economic Times   Pressure from within and outside the government has forced Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia to clarify that the Tendulkar Commission's poverty line was, "not meant to be an acceptable level of living for the aam aadmi." Ahluwalia said a new methodology will be worked out to determine entitlements of Beneficiaries under various schemes for poor. A Socio-Economic and Caste-Economic census was also underway to survey all rural...

Though the methodology for determining the poor would be based on the socio-economic caste census being undertaken by the Rural Development Ministry, the (Suresh) Tendulkar poverty line would remain a relevant reference point “to see how development is helping to take more and more individuals above a fixed line over time and across States,” Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told a news conference here on Monday. As per the...

The National Food Security Bill, 2011, designed to make access to food a legal right, is the last chance to convert Gandhiji's vision of a hunger-free India into reality. What Mahatma Gandhi said of the role of food in a human being's life in a 1946 speech at Noakhali, now in Bangladesh, remains the most powerful expression of the importance of making access to food a basic human right. Gandhiji also...

A committee headed by Planning Commission member Arun Maira, the former head of The Boston Consulting Group in India, wants all acquisitions of Indian pharmaceutical companies by foreigners to be scanned by the Competition Commission of India or CCI. The report will now be sent to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Prime Minister Singh is expected to take a final view on the...

Of late, there has been a debate on whether public programmes such as school education, scholarships, health-care delivery and access to microcredit can be targeted at Beneficiaries based on religion; some consider this ‘unconstitutional' and argue that it amounts to discrimination. I highlight the constitutional provisions and argue that there is nothing in the Constitution which bars identification of Beneficiaries based on religion. Religious identity is listed on a par...