Poverty could not rein in the spirit of this youth and hold him back from fighting his way through all odds.  Unlike many youngsters in his neighbourhood who had resigned to fate, Monoranjan Bera worked hard to change his destiny. Bera has ranked 50th in the IIT entrance examination to a joint MSc-PhD programme.  Bera, living in a single room tenement at Bhatapukur in Kharagpur, can serve as an example to youngsters.  "One...

No matter where you draw the line, the fall in poverty is greater in high GDP growth years   Some plain facts and some ugly truths. The plain fact is that poverty in india has declined at a rapid pace during the UPA years post 2004. An ugly truth. When the Planning Commission released the estimates of poverty in india, on the basis of the household survey conducted by the NSS in...

Progressive strengthening of public facilities is the only way to reach medical services to the population as a whole. “The best form of providing health protection would be to change the economic system which produces ill health, and to liquidate ignorance, poverty and unemployment. The practice of each individual purchasing his own medical care does not work. It is unjust, inefficient, wasteful and completely outmoded ... In our highly geared, modern...

Over the past week, I’ve chronicled my investigative research on starvation in India – a project I’ve been working on with a colleague from the Centre for Equity Studies, a New Delhi think tank. We’ve told stories of people who were forced to eat poisoned roots to stay alive; a family that suffered the deaths of members from three different generations in a span of 24 hours; a woman faced with...

BANWARA, India – In the fall of 2006, Gita Devi was pregnant with her sixth child when her family fell on hard times. A severe drought made it more difficult than ever to find farm work here in India’s northeastern plains. The family couldn’t afford food. It was unable to get a government ration card to buy grains and rice at steep discounts, even though it clearly was poor enough to...