-The Business Standard   Much depends on a strong implementation framework but the imposition of a cap by the Planning Commission could lead to arbitrary exclusions. Himanshu Assistant Professor of Economics, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University The methodology, which is based on the framework suggested by the Saxena Committee, uses indicators that have been refined using a large-scale pilot survey There are over 400 million poor (the number varies depending on which estimate you...

Bringing an aggressive outlook to the ministry of rural development, Jairam Ramesh, who took charge of the portfolio in July, has attempted to address and fast-track contentious issues such as the proposed land acquisition legislation and the census for identifying households below the poverty line (BPL). Ramesh spoke in an interview about his blueprint for the ministry and revisiting controversial elements, including identifying the poor and poverty caps imposed by...

Purpose of RTI Act will be lost if killings continue, says CPI(M) member The murder of RTI activist Shehla Masood in Bhopal found an echo in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday with a Communist Party of India (Marxist) member expressing serious concern over the killings across the country and demanding steps to protect whistleblowers. Raising the issue during the Zero Hour, Moin-ul-Hassan said the RTI activist was killed on a day when...

The ever-energetic Jairam Ramesh has unveiled a new land acquisition policy for discussion. He has taken on the difficult task of changing an old law whose implementation has led to a sorry mess in Nandigram, Singur and Noida, to mention only a few of the recent cases that have hit the headlines. India’s policy regime for managing land rights and land transactions is totally dysfunctional. Greedy politicians in state governments have...

-The Economic Times   We condemn the killing of Shehla Masood, a public-spirited woman of Bhopal who used the Right to Information (RTI) Act extensively to expose corruption and misgovernance on a range of issues. The state government must bring the culprits to book and investigate any possible links of the crime to public officials whose misconduct was under her investigation. This brings the number of RTI activists killed across the country so...