-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Facing allegations of trivializing poverty for tom-tomming Planning Commission figures that show a decline in the number of poor, the Congress changed its tune on Saturday to dub the poverty line as "unrealistic". The all-round assault on Congress seems to have resulted in the course correction that reflected in the disapprovals issued by Digvijaya Singh, Kapil Sibal and Rajiv Shukla. Union minister Kapil Sibal and AICC general...

-The Hindu     Women are essential for the success of schemes like the mid-day meal programme. Improving their wages and working conditions would be better than blaming them when things go wrong. Mahatma Gandhi once declared, "A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." By this yardstick, India does not fare well. Consider recent headlines alone: 23 Bihari children die after eating poisoned midday meals at their schools. Six-year-old...

-The Hindustan Times India's official poverty line-a vital economic statistic-is threatening to snowball into a major political controversy in an election year. Political parties are busy quibbling over the details of defining a poverty line amid a welter of protests from social Activists who are accusing it of abdicating its responsibility. Economists set a poverty line to fix a threshold income to get a headcount of poor people in a country. Households...

-The Indian Express Why are we reticent about using techno-industrial solutions to reduce malnutrition? The death of several children from consuming a toxic midday meal in Bihar evoked a great sense of outrage. But this outrage will, in all probability, soon die down. Yet, this tragedy, as many reports show, is the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it lies unseen a story of poor service delivery and a lack of commitment. India...

-The Indian Express Pandharpur: Jaya Waghela, 52, spends more than an hour cleaning herself every morning. But the soap and water cannot wash off the stench of human faeces she cleans everyday with her broom at 600-odd public toilets along the banks of the river Bhima in Pandharpur district of Maharashtra. "The stench is so overbearing that it has killed my appetite," says Waghela, who has stayed away from her kitchen since...