-The Deccan Herald The poverty line continues to be a conundrum. The fixing of the poverty line at Rs 47 for urban areas and Rs. 32 in rural areas per capita per day by the latest Rangarajan committee report, based on a person or family's spending per day (called ‘consumption expenditure') has again drawn vociferous criticism. All these years, this all important line has not been fixed in a rational manner, rendering...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The emphasis on use of digital technologies to bridge the "rural-urban gap" in the union budget is limited to high talk and minimal allocations. The need for a more comprehensive and peoples' participation-oriented rural action plan should have been the focus while setting sectoral allocations, but that is not to be in this mid-year budget. Vipul Mudgal (vipulmudgal@gmail.com) heads the Inclusive Media for Change project at the Centre...

-The Business Standard Start thinking of new development indicators The annual Human Development Report, or HDR, has recorded with depressing regularity India's mediocre performance in seeking to improve the overall well-being of its people. The latest one, for 2014, is no exception. In the last five years (2008-13), India's performance on improving its Human Development Index (HDI) has been poorer than most of its peers in South Asia, and among Brazil, Russia,...

-The Hindu   An improvement in sanitation and cleanliness will eliminate much of the difference in malnutrition between India and the rest of the world, and across Indian States Historically the greatest advances in longevity and mortality reduction have come not from treatment of individual disease but from public health. This includes modern drainage and sewerage systems (sewage treatment plants), drinking water systems that produce and deliver disease-free water and solid waste disposal...

-Niti Central According to a report, the Rangarajan committee has retained consumption expenditure as the basis for determining poverty according to which the total number of poor in the country at 36.3 crore or 29.6 per cent of the population. After much public outcry over the UPA's poverty line, another expert panel headed by veteran economist C Rangarajan has come up with a report recommending that those who are spending more than...