-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...
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Steep drop in number of poor gifts UPA talking point, raises eyebrows
-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Manmohan Singh-led UPA government can finally grab an official statistic to burnish its aam aadmi credentials. The percentage of people living below the poverty line has fallen to 21.9 per cent of the population in 2011-12 from 37.2 per cent in 2004-05 - the year that the Congress-led UPA stormed to power. The percentage of people below the poverty line has been estimated at 25.7 per cent in...
More »It really is the economy, stupid-Rukmini S
-The Hindu Development, price rise and jobs will be the overriding voter concerns in 2014 Lok Sabha poll Results from a nearly 20,000-strong opinion poll conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) for CNN-IBN and The Hindu indicate that ‘development and the economy' and ‘price rise' will dominate voter concerns in 2014. Corruption comes in at a distant fifth, just half as important to voters as ‘development and...
More »The politics of cheap rice in Karnataka -ND Shiva Kumar & Narayanan Krishnaswami
-The Times of India With the state budget all set to be presented on July 12, TOI takes a hard look at the government's cheap rice scheme and its impact on politics and employment. Will cheap rice boil? Let's look at the math. Reducing the price from Rs 3 to Re 1 per kg will help a family save Rs 60 per month. Till now, poor families got rice from the Public Distribution...
More »Poverty levels decline significantly between 2009-12; less than 25% poor: NSSO Survey -Dilasha Seth
-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Poverty level in the country may have declined significantly between 2009-10 and 2011-12, the latest government survey on household consumer expenditure indicates, giving something to the beleaguered UPA government to hard sell ahead of elections next year. Back of the envelope calculations by ET suggest that poverty levels have fallen to less than 25% of population because of a sharp rise in rural incomes and decent performance...
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