-The Hindustan Times The government on Thursday put the controversial poverty estimation in a deep freeze by appointing a new expert group to recommend a new estimation methodology aimed at linking government subsidies to poor. The group to be led by C Rangarajan, head of Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council and having three others members is expected to submit its report in nine months, minister of planning Ashwini Kumar told reporters. However, not...

-The Economic Times, The Cabinet has cleared a proposed Bill empowering the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to regulate all microfinance institutions (MFIs). A central legislation makes sense only to the extent that it over-rides draconian state-level laws. However, the Bill suffers from many infirmities. And it is unfortunate that these have been overlooked. The law, if enacted, is likely to kill small MFIs and hurt the sector that is struggling...

Over 2000 impoverished Burmese asylum-seekers from across India, camping on the streets of Delhi pleading for refugee status were dealt a double whammy. On Tuesday afternoon, even as a delegation of Burmese met UN officials to sort out their problems, they were forced out of their temporary shelter in Vasant Kunj by police, dumped into buses and rickshaws and told to find their way home. To make matters worse, their...

-The Economist UNDER a thatched roof, lit by a full, yellow moon, Shiv Kumari explains how she and her five children survive. She is a widow, 30 years old, living in a home made of packed mud. She works the nearby fields, draws a small pension, some food rations and gets a few days of paid labour each month from a rural make-work scheme. Semra village, made up of 70 households, most...

PDS is getting computerised, but documents still come in between the needy and food security The Delhi government’s Food and Supplies Department is computerising its database to ensure ration card holders get their entitlements without fail. But it does not have a clue as to how the needy can get ration cards under the Public Distribution System (PDS). Or, it has not used any technology to reach the needy. Getting a...