-The Times of India   A comprehensive and multi-sectoral mechanism for control of anemia, a highly prevalent disease among adolescents and women in rural Rajasthan, has been recommended for the state. The recommendation has ben made in a study report released by Vijay Shankar Vyas, an economist and deputy chairman of Rajasthan State Planning Board. The report titled 'Strengthening Adolescent Anemia Control Programme (AACP) in Bikaner and in Jaipur, is prepared by...

Expected to clarify Planning Commission's stand on the issue today Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Sunday called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the wake of the controversy over the Commission's Rs. 32 per capita per day definition of poverty line. He is expected to clarify the Commission's stand on the issue on Monday. The controversy broke out after an affidavit was filed by the Commission in the Supreme...

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...

Are millions of Indians being forced to leave their villages for cities and towns because there aren't enough jobs at home and farm incomes are drying up? Is this "distress migration" unprecedented in India's history? Award-winning journalist P Sainath thinks so. Examining the latest census data, he finds that India's urban population has risen more (91 million more than in the 2001 census) than the rural population (90.6 million more than...

-The Economic Times   More than 25 of the top economists of the country have written an open letter against the Planning Commission poverty line and said that the public distribution system should be universalized. "We do not consider the official national poverty lines set by the Planning Commission, at Rs 32 and Rs 26 per capita per day for urban and rural areas respectively, to be acceptable benchmarks to measure the extent...