This Book discusses a new poverty agenda for Asia and the role of social policies in economic transformation and reducing poverty. The poverty-reduction agenda is well known. So is the debate over poverty. No one disputes the fact that poverty of income (or expenditure, as countries such as India do not collect household data on income) is an imperfect measure of poverty, as there are non-income dimensions, too. Consequently, we...

At a time when rice smuggling has become a political issue in Tamil Nadu, the civil supplies department's reply to an application under the Right To Information (RTI) Act reveals that as many as 20,775 tonnes of rice worth Rs 11.73 crore were seized in anti-smuggling operations in the state in last three years. The department also said that 5,152 persons were arrested in three years for smuggling rice meant to...

Should the Central government run schools, crèches, pre-schools, dispensaries, employment schemes, the buying and selling of food grains, and build houses, not to speak of selling milk as it does in Delhi? Though the states seem to have taken it as their fate to have schemes on state subjects like education, agriculture and so on tailored for them by the Centre, as if in distrust of the states’ capability to think...

Asking questions can cost your life in India - even if the right to solicit information is protected by law. Amar Nath Deo Pandey is luckier - in less than a week, he appears to have escaped two attempts on his life in a nondescript town in India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. More than five years after the introduction of a landmark law that allows Indians to access information held by...

By all indications, FDI in multi-brand retail is a fait accompli. Or so we have been told time and again by everyone, the PM downward. The “question is at what point of time it should be done”. This remark from Pranab Mukherjee in a post-budget TV interview may have revealed that the debate has moved beyond whether to permit FDI in multi-brand retailing—the lifeline of small- and medium-sized neighbourhood stores....