Statistical poverty lines should not become real-life eligibility criteria for food entitlements.  Nothing is easier than to recognise a poor person when you see him or her. Yet the task of identifying and counting the poor seems to elude the country's best experts. Take for instance the “headcount” of rural poverty — the proportion of the rural population below the poverty line. At least four alternative figures are available: 28...

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today said a survey would be conducted to know the exact number of nomad community people residing in the state, with efforts to settle them permanently. Kumar called upon the 'nomad' community members at a public meeting to take advantage of measures by the state government to improve their lot and implored them to learn the 3 R's (basic literacy) so that they could know...

India has notified education as a fundamental right for all children between 6 and 14 years, enabling them and their parents to legally demand schooling from the government for the academic session beginning April 1. Eight years after Parliament amended the Constitution recognising education as a fundamental right, the government has finally notified the amendment and a law was passed last year to make the right a reality. The notification,...

Issues today have to be dressed up in ways certified by the corporate media. They have to be justified not by their importance to the public but by their acceptability to the media, their owners and sponsors.  That the terrible tragedy in Pune demands serious, sober coverage is a truism. One of the side-effects of the ghastly blast has been unintended, though. The orgy of self-congratulation that marked the media...

Upholding the right to shelter as a fundamental right for all residents of the Capital, including those living in slums, the Delhi High Court on Thursday restrained the state government from forcibly razing any hutment — unless it was an encroachment on an existing road — without guaranteeing alternative accommodation. The government was also told to formulate a concrete relocation policy in cases where slums needed to be razed. Delivering...