Those unwilling to reveal their religion and caste can choose the “no caste” and “no religion” options in the caste census starting next month. But such provisions in the caste census that is being conducted after a gap of 80 years have raised questions over whether its findings will be accurate. “The enumerators will move from house to house and ask every citizen their caste and religion apart from collecting information on...

-The Financial Express   Faced with a barrage of figures on poverty—27.5% in 2004-05 according to the Planning Commission, 37.2% for 2004-05 according to Professor Tendulkar and 77% according to the late Arjun Sengupta—a Census seems the best option. Sure it will cost R2,000 crore or so, we were told the last time the government spoke of a Below Poverty Line (BPL) Census, but at least we’ll know. The team, not the...

Misleading data cited in a seminar paper on the situation of the minority community in the State tend to detract from the Left Front government's exceptional record on this count. Abusaleh Shariff, the Chief Economist of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, who was the Member-Secretary of the Sachar Committee, presented a paper on the socio-economic development of Muslims in West Bengal, at a seminar organised by the Institute of...

This book discusses a new poverty agenda for Asia and the role of social policies in economic transformation and reducing poverty. The poverty-reduction agenda is well known. So is the debate over poverty. No one disputes the fact that poverty of income (or expenditure, as countries such as India do not collect household data on income) is an imperfect measure of poverty, as there are non-income dimensions, too. Consequently, we...

Promises action “to allay fears and insecurity Christians are experiencing” Chief Ministers will be asked to deal firmly with anti-Christian violence Promises to act on the Saldanha report on violence against minorities in Karnataka Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured a Christian delegation on Saturday that he was trying to evolve a consensus on granting Scheduled Caste status to Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims. He also said he would ask Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram...