It was a warm summer’s morning last week in teeming old Faridabad, a chaotic, industrial town where nearly half the people live in slums. Praveen Kumar was talking to students at a government girls’ senior secondary school. They complained about the broken fans, and they told him how there was just one sweeper to clean the stinky toilet. A lean, graying man with a receding hairline and neatly trimmed moustache, 51-year-old...

-The Business Standard   The land acquisition for the 12 million tonne Posco steel plant in Orissa has picked up pace with United Action Committee, a pro Posco outfit active at the project site near Paradip, extending its support to the process. On the fifth day of the exercise today, the revenue officials demolished 36 betel vines on the government land and distributed compensation of Rs 57 lakh to the beneficiaries in...

-The Economic Times   Everyone knows poverty is rampant in India, but nobody knows exactly how many of us are poor. That's because we've tried to count the poor many times with different assumptions, and come up with widely different numbers. In 2004-05, the Planning Commission reckoned that only 27% of Indians were poor. This was debunked by a committee headed by Suresh Tendulkar in 2009, which pegged the number of poor...

-The Financial Express   Faced with a barrage of figures on poverty—27.5% in 2004-05 according to the Planning Commission, 37.2% for 2004-05 according to Professor Tendulkar and 77% according to the late Arjun Sengupta—a Census seems the best option. Sure it will cost R2,000 crore or so, we were told the last time the government spoke of a Below Poverty Line (BPL) Census, but at least we’ll know. The team, not the...

Those unwilling to reveal their religion and caste can choose the “no caste” and “no religion” options in the caste census starting next month. But such provisions in the caste census that is being conducted after a gap of 80 years have raised questions over whether its findings will be accurate. “The enumerators will move from house to house and ask every citizen their caste and religion apart from collecting information on...