The purpose of this piece is not to defend the Planning Commission on poverty figures but to indicate that the methodologies have evolved over time after considerable research and they are useful for policy purposes if not for linking with entitlement programmes (some of us have written earlier that the poor and vulnerable are more numerous than the commission's poverty figures and these should be delinked from entitlement programmes).  The commission...

A new study looking at cancer mortality in 2010 in India found a high 71 per cent (3,95,400) deaths in people between 30 and 69 years. Cancer accounted for 8 per cent of the 2·5 million total male deaths and 12 per cent of the 1·6 million total female deaths in the same age group. The high mortality rate during the middle age is very different from the developed countries,...

The Supreme Court has handed down an extraordinary decision with some extraordinary arguments directing the central government to execute the “river interlinking project”. How could the Court which says “it can hardly take unto itself tasks of making of a policy decision or planning for the country on the need for acquisition and construction of river linking channels” then go on to actually take the very same policy decision and...

A classified US report listed India’s three major river basins — Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra —among the world top 10 water conflict zones in ten years from now. The report based on National Intelligence Estimate on water security said the chances of water issues causing war in next 10 years were minimal but they could disrupt national and global food market and cause tension between states. “Beyond 2022, use of water as...

-PTI As many as 209 farmers committed suicide in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra in 2011 due to agrarian reasons, Parliament was informed on Monday. A total of 275 farmers had ended their lives in Vidarbha region in 2010, as per the figures included in the rehabilitation package, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha. Pawar said 565 farmers committed suicide in the Vidarbha region in 2006, while...