It has to be but a means to development, not an end in itself Is India doing marvellously well, or is it failing terribly? Depending on whom you speak to, you could pick up either of those answers with some frequency. One story, very popular among a minority but a large enough group—of Indians who are doing very well (and among the media that cater largely to them)—runs something like...

Poverty lines have been in the news again. This round started when a Planning Commission affidavit to the Supreme Court placing the poverty line at Rs 26 per capita per day (rural), Rs 32 (urban), raised a furore over the use of these to set a cap on the percentage of the population covered by the food security Bill. Since then, the pendulum has swung to the other extreme. The latest...

-The Economist   A maverick minister lays into a hallowed programme IT LOOKS like risky politics for Jairam Ramesh, who runs India’s biggest civilian ministry, in charge of rural development, to lash out at his own government’s flagship welfare scheme. Mr Ramesh, who got his cabinet post in July, has sparked a row in the past week over corruption and poor results within a public programme that guarantees 100 days of paid work...

The Government is finalising the blueprint for a scheme to enable a vast majority of the urban poor to own a house.   The housing and urban poverty alleviation (HUPA) ministry has proposed to stand in as guarantor for home loans up to Rs 5 lakh. Under the scheme, banks would be reimbursed up to 90 per cent in case the poor default on these loans. The scheme, targeting those earning less than...

The National Food Security Bill, 2011, designed to make access to food a legal right, is the last chance to convert Gandhiji's vision of a hunger-free India into reality. What Mahatma Gandhi said of the role of food in a human being's life in a 1946 speech at Noakhali, now in Bangladesh, remains the most powerful expression of the importance of making access to food a basic human right. Gandhiji also...