The episodes of violence in land acquisition by the government, as witnessed recently in Bhatta-Parsaul in Uttar Pradesh and in other states earlier, occur because patterns of violence are inbuilt into the process. Despite a bill pending in Parliament since 2007, there has been little effort by political parties to evolve a consensus on acquisition of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes. The law as at present and also the provisions...

-The Economic Times The Parliamentary Standing Committee on finance has questioned the government's move to introduce a right to food bill when it did not have a single, widely-accepted definition of the poor. The "criteria of identification of the poor remains nebulous," the Yashwant Sinha-headed committee has observed. The proposed food security bill, seen as the largest such legislation anywhere in the world, hinges on the definition of the poor. The...

The Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY), under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, has been launched for slum dwellers and the urban poor on the lines of the Indira Awas Yojana for the rural poor. RAY is a right-based, reform-driven programme under the Jawaharlal National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). It has been launched with the aim of creating a slum-free India by providing affordable housing for slum dwellers. A Guwahati...

Social development zones (SDZs) represent a new approach to creating education and health institutions in the country connecting emerging opportunities in policy. These also address some major constraints that Indian private investment faces today in investing in these two critical sectors of development that directly impact on unlocking human potential. These opportunities are presented by the commencement of Rajiv Awas Yojana, a property-rights driven effort at moving towards a slum-free India...

-The Economic Times   Everyone knows poverty is rampant in India, but nobody knows exactly how many of us are poor. That's because we've tried to count the poor many times with different assumptions, and come up with widely different numbers. In 2004-05, the Planning Commission reckoned that only 27% of Indians were poor. This was debunked by a committee headed by Suresh Tendulkar in 2009, which pegged the number of poor...