The Union Cabinet, which meets here on Thursday, will discuss a proposal to dovetail the promised caste census with the survey to identify those living below the poverty line (BPL), government sources told The Hindu. The entire exercise should be completed by the end of this year, these sources added. Dovetailing the two exercises will ensure that the castes enumerated can be correlated with the socio-economic data, and facilitate a more...

A Working Group (WG) set up by the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) has drafted a detailed note on land acquisition and relief and rehabilitation which seeks not only to go beyond the pending government bills on the subject, but recommends that the two be merged into a single National Development, Acquisition, Displacement and Rehabilitation Act. Interestingly, it rejects the Haryana model that Congress leaders only too often hold up...

If the problems are macro, think micro. That seems to have been the guiding principle for Lekha-Mendha, the Maharashtra village that last month became the first in India to win the right to grow, harvest and sell bamboo. Such rights are the key goal of a five-year-old central law which aims to give tribal communities control over some resources of the jungles they live in. “There is no point in looking out...

-BBC   India's cabinet has approved a proposal for a survey to identify people living below the poverty line, which also redefines what constitutes poverty. It will classify the rural poor into "destitutes, manual scavengers and primitive tribal groups". Urban poor will be defined as those in vulnerable shelters, low-paid jobs and homes headed by women or children. The survey, to be conducted alongside a caste census later this year, will help identify those...

India spends more on programs for the poor than most developing countries, but it has failed to eradicate poverty because of widespread corruption and faulty government administration, the World Bank said Wednesday. “India is not getting the ‘bang for the rupee’ that its significant expenditure would seem to warrant, and the needs of important population groups remain only party addressed,” John D. Blomquist, lead economist at the World Bank, wrote in...