Watching the recent debate on the poverty line has been a depressing experience. As the debate unfolded, we witnessed self-righteous commentators engaged in a game of one-upmanship to prove that no one was more concerned for the poor than they, electronic media failing in its responsibility to inform the public simple facts and the Planning Commission proving itself incapable of communicating in simple terms the rationale behind its proposal either...

With deep pockets and international sourcing capabilities, global retail chains will outcompete domestic players, displace jobs, and undermine livelihoods. In predictable fashion, the Manmohan Singh government chose to ignore voices of opposition and implement its agenda of permitting foreign investment in the retail trade. While Parliament was in session, the Cabinet met to approve the hitherto prohibited foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail, with a cap of 51 per cent on...

Chief minister Naveen Patnaik today slammed the Centre’s move to allow 51 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in the retail sector by demanding immediate scrapping of the UPA’s “ill advised and regressive” retail policy. “In our considered view, this policy is ill-advised and highly regressive. I would, therefore, earnestly request you to reconsider the matter and withdraw this policy immediately,” said Naveen in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Apart...

-The Business Standard   Vimla Devi is a committed anganwadi worker (AWW) in a remote village in Uttar Pradesh, the most populated state of India. Anganwadi is a village level institution under Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), one of the most talked about flagship programmes of the Indian Government. She is also the weakest link in a critical programme, which is underfunded, says Shantanu Gupta in the first of field-data reports, the...

Cutting across party lines, several members of Parliament backed a universal public Distribution system to ensure food security for all citizens “as a right” and vowed to oppose the ‘targeted' food security bill in Parliament. Among the participants at a Jan Manch organised by the Right to Food Campaign were G. Vivekananda, K. Keshava Rao and Mani Shankar Aiyer (Congress), Prakash Javadekar (BJP), Brinda Karat and P. Rajeev (CPI-M), D. Raja...