What has changed since the economic reforms began? Many things. No waiting for years for a telephone connection, now cell phones with everyone. From three makes of cars with wind-down windows to dozens of makes, all air-conditioned. From one domestic airline, government owned and for the rich, to many private carriers for the middle class too. What has also changed is the knocking on the window. There are many more rich people...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Total Matching Records found : 347
Reading between the Rs32 poverty line
-The Hindustan Times Do these people look well-off to you? The planning commission puts them above poverty line. Basant Kumar, 51 Shopkeeper Kusumpur Pahari slum, Vasant Vihar, Delhi Daily expense: Rs 53 Basant Kumar runs a little shop in a slum in Vasant Vihar, home to over two lakh migrant families. He feeds and Clothes his wife and three children on his meagre earnings of Rs5,000 a month. He also works odd-jobs, in construction or with...
More »Facing Anti-Poor Label, Govt Asks Plan Panel to Revise Joke of an Affidavit
-The Times of India Faced with fierce criticism over the Planning Commission’s new criteria for poverty line, the Government has asked the Plan panel to revise its affidavit. The Planning Commission had said that that those spending more than Rs. 32 a day in urban areas, or Rs. 26 a day in villages, would no longer be eligible to draw benefits meant for those living below the poverty line. The new tentative...
More »Superweeds, superpests and superprofits by Vandana Shiva
New research from Navdanya and from the US Union of Concerned Scientists proves that Bt cotton yields are actually a third of what Monsanto claims. Genetic engineering is not going to help feed the world, writes Vandana Shiva, but it is going to harm public health and ecosystems We have been repeatedly told that genetically engineered (GE) crops will save the world. They will save the world by increasing yields and...
More »The life and death of Shehla Masood by Vandita Mishra
Stories abound in Bhopal of the life and death of Shehla Masood. But among those who knew her, there appears agreement on one point: something was so uncharacteristically passive, so un-Shehla-like, they say, about the dead body slumped in the driving seat of the silver-grey Santro on the morning of August 16, with no evident signs of struggle and a bullet hole in the neck. Some crude clues to the extraordinary...
More »
