Ashish Bose coined the term BIMARU in a paper to then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s to highlight the economic backwardness of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. He tells Somesh Jha he is not inspired by the Planning Commission’s bogus poverty figures. He says it is time the commission wound up. Excerpts: * You coined the term 'BIMARU', but these states performed well in alleviating poverty in...
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Poverty line low, need to revisit methodology, says Montek Singh Ahluwalia
-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Planning commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Monday admitted that the latest poverty estimates released last week is indeed low and needs to be revised upward. The commission said last week that only 21.9% of the population was poor, based on a per capita spending of 33.33 day in cities and 27.20 rural India, causing widespread outrage for being too low. "As the country becomes richer and...
More »Forests of the night -Christophe Jaffrelot
-The Indian Express How Chhattisgarh became a sanctuary, and then a laboratory, for Naxals Some time ago, Chhattisgarh hit the headlines because of a Maoist attack on state Congress leaders, in which V.C. Shukla and Mahendra Karma died. Since then, the Congress has accused the BJP government of a conspiracy, and some BJP leaders have accused former chief minister Ajit Jogi of being part of a conspiracy himself. Politicising this tragic episode...
More »No exits from these tunnels of death-Agrima Bhasin
-The Hindu Deep-rooted caste biases and the brazen disregard by civic authorities of court judgments are the main reason for the frequent deaths of sewerage workers across the country Earlier this month, a group of men set forth to unblock a drain sewer in the basement of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) in Delhi. Two of the men, Ashok and Chhotu, entered the sewer but did not return....
More »Figuring out Gujarat -Bhalchandra Mungekar
-The Indian Express The Gujarat model of development is not what its champions say it is Having realised that the people of India have not exonerated him for the post-Godhra killings of Muslims in 2002 on his watch, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi systematically tried to build up his image as a "man of development"(vikas purush). The Sangh Parivar called it the "Gujarat model of development" and started propagating it. But what...
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