-Livemint.com India’s lack of official data for estimates could impair policy formulation and thus hurt the economy Two different sets of poverty estimates for India were released recently. One of the papers was authored by Surjit Bhalla, Karan Bhasin, and Arvind Virmani and the second by Sutirtha Roy and Roy Weide, both affiliated to the World Bank. Both presented estimates for roughly the same period, after 2011-12, but ended up at starkly...

-Statement issued by Concerned Citizens, Doctors, Nutritionists, Parents, Advocates and Researchers dated 5th May, 2022 Amidst growing attacks on meat sellers and restaurant owners who sell non-vegetarian food, a statement has been issued by concerned citizens, and civil society groups. The statement depicts how such attacks or bans against non-vegetarian food would impact the right to food as well as the nutritional status of the disadvantaged sections of the society and the undernourished...

-Financial Express Dataset and methodological weaknesses cast doubt on recent poverty estimates that claim drastic reduction Bhalla, Bhasin and Virmani in a working paper (IMF), claimed India’s poverty, per a $1.9 per person per day poverty line (at PPP), was 0.9% of the population in 2020. Thanks to government transfer of free rations of 5 kg per person month, it fell to 0.8% (from 0.9% in 2019). Roy and de Velt, for...

-The Hindu Reviving the official household spending survey is only a first step India’s official statistical machinery is gearing up to relaunch the All-India Household Consumer Expenditure Survey, traditionally undertaken quinquennially, from July 2022. If it fructifies, the result may be known towards the latter half of 2024, provided the Government permits the release. The last such Survey (2017-18), did not get such a sanction — its results reportedly indicated the first...

-The Hindu Improving natural iron absorption from iron-rich grains is a better strategy than chemical iron fortification of cereals Is iron deficiency universal and profound in India? Is it due to dietary iron deficiency? With the Indian vegetarian diet, containing 8.5 mg iron/1,000 Kcal-energy, women who eat adequately (enough energy for a sedentary lifestyle), should have an iron intake of about 15 mg/day, matching their daily iron requirement (15 mg/day). Adult men...