Bolangir district in Orissa, facing drought conditions since 1965, sees an annual mass migration of farmers to other States in search of work. SURESH GOHIR of Bhotapada village in the backward Bolangir district of Orissa consumed pesticide two years ago after his paddy crop failed. He survived the suicide attempt but found life doubly difficult as debt had mounted. Suresh was forced to migrate to neighbouring Andhra Pradesh in search of...

EVEN though the Right to Information Act guarantees citizens their right to know and expose corruption in government offices, increasing attacks on RTI activists have put this most important right in jeopardy. The RTI Act was enacted after a long struggle by civil rights organisations. However, those who dare question the ways of the powers that be and expose them are eliminated in cold-blooded murders. The manner in which Amit...

In April, India’s Planning Commission accepted recommendations put forth by the so-called Tendulkar Committee on a new poverty headcount for the country. Constituted by the Planning Commission under economist Suresh D Tendulkar, the committee, after four years and a new methodology, arrived at a new figure for the number of Indians living below the poverty line: 37.2 percent, ten points higher than the previous official figure. With the government’s subsequent...

To eliminate misuse and leakages from its flagship rural employment programme, India could introduce biometric-aided identity checks that can be verified remotely. The government’s initiative comes at a time when the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has been criticized for leakages. It is the government’s largest social sector spending programme with allocation for this fiscal pegged at Rs40,100 crore. The proposal, which has already been submitted to the government for...

The rapid growth of emerging economies has led to a shift in economic power: forecasts based on analysis by late economist Angus Maddison suggest that the aggregate economic weight of developing and emerging economies is about to surpass that of the countries that currently make up the advanced world. According to Perspectives on Global Development: Shifting Wealth, a new publication from the OECD Development Centre, the economic and financial crisis is...