-The Times of India   Two Planning Commission members, Abhijeet Sen and Mihir Shah, came out in revolt on Wednesday against the panel’s affidavit to the Supreme Court that those spending Rs 32 a day in Urban areas or Rs 26 a day in villages would no longer be deemed poor by the government. Sen and Shah told TOI that the Planning Commission had avoided answering the critical question that the SC had...

-The Business Standard   After generating much controversy back home on the Planning Commission's “unrealistic definition” of poverty line, India had to field some tough queries in Washington over the matter. Chief Economic Advisor Kaushik Basu said the government was looking at various parameters of poverty estimates to provide better coverage to the vulnerable section through a proposed food law. "...now we are going to go into a new food security programme, where we...

IN preparing the approach paper to the Twelfth Five Year Plan, the Planning Commission engaged “all interested persons” in the country in a wide, web-based consultative exercise and also involved a varied group of “stakeholders”. The resulting document clearly indicates some awareness of the complex problems likely to be faced by the economy in the coming period. But it falls short of expectations because it does not provide a cohesive...

For first time since 1921, India's urban population goes up by more than its rural Is distress migration on a massive scale responsible for one of the most striking findings of Census 2011: that for the first time since 1921, urban India added more numbers to its population in a decade than rural India did? At 833.1 million, India's rural population today is 90.6 million higher than it was a decade ago....

The controversial three-and-a-half year long medical degree -Bachelor of Rural Medicine and Surgery (BRMS) -- has now got the backing of Planning Commission's all powerful high level expert group on universal health coverage. The panel has in its report (finalized on Sunday and available with TOI) "endorsed" the all new BRMS cadre and said that as a career progression incentive, they should be promoted to the level of public health officers...