To get the Below Poverty Line figures in perspective, we need to closely monitor the numbers driving the Corporate Plunder Line. One Tendulkar makes the big scores. The other wrecks the averages. The Planning Commission clearly prefers Suresh to Sachin. Using Professor Tendulkar's methodology, it declares that there's been another massive fall in poverty. Yes, another (“more dramatic in the rural areas”). “Record Fall in Poverty” reads one headline. The record...

One man’s fiscal problem is another man’s lifeline. Trigger happy bureaucrats and economists may love shooting down subsidies because it bloats the fiscal deficit and burdens the government but the simple fact is that in a one billion strong nation, in which nearly one in every three live below the poverty line, one needs an effective and efficient method through which privileged tax payers can support the poor. Last week, finance...

-The Economic Times   Given the hurdles to infrastructure projects across India, there's good news from Tamil Nadu. The prolonged shutdown at the Kudankulam nuclear power plant has ended following chief minister J Jayalalithaa's decision to back the Rs 13,000 crore project. But, while accompanied by a welcome area development package, this official nod may not dampen the ongoing anti-Kudankulam agitation. So, police must use utmost care in dealing with protesters. And...

-The Times of India With Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa giving the nod for the Kudankulam nuclear power plants, Russia said that it was going to send its scientists to the site on Tuesday to start commissioning work for the first unit of the reactors. Russian officials in India said that Moscow stood vindicated by Jayalalithaa's decision to back the reactors that couldn't be commissioned last year because of sudden protests...

The government plans to cut its subsidy bill to under 2% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012-13, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said in his budget speech on Friday. High crude oil prices and burgeoning fertilizer subsidies, primarily on account of imported non-urea fertilizers, have meant India’s subsidy bill has zoomed to Rs2.16 trillion, or 2.5% of the GDP. Mukherjee has set an ambitious target to reduce this to under 1.75%...