The Centre has cited three shortcomings in the implementation of the rural job scheme in Bengal and linked the next instalment of grant to the resolution of the problems. In a letter sent to chief minister Mamata Banerjee yesterday, Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has identified the critical areas as low completion rate of works, delay in e-transfer of wages and inadequate action on complaints of irregularities. “Let me make it...

-The Business Standard About 240 million more people in Asia, or 6.5 per cent of the population, could have been lifted out of poverty, had inequality not widened over the past 20 years, roughly the era coinciding with economic reforms in India, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said in a report released on Wednesday. “Asia’s rapid growth is leaving millions behind, causing a widening gap between the rich and the poor that...

There is no case whatsoever to construct a single poverty line based on a calorie or expenditure norm; all such lines are arbitrary and do not take into account the different dimensions of poverty. It is far better to focus on disaggregated information on a variety of parameters – education, housing, clothing, health, etc – which can give us unambiguous information about the different facets of poverty over the course...

-IANS The percentage of people living in extreme poverty declined from 52% in 1981 to 22% in 2008 thanks to strong economic growth in the emerging markets of India, Brazil and China, according to a new report. This means that the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty in half by 2015 has already been met, US think tank Hudson Institute's Centre for Global Prosperity's (CGP) annual Index of Global Philanthropy and...

-The Times of India Suicide may be a crime in law but the jury is still out on the question of punishment for those who survive the attempt. A bid to take one's own life attracts a jail term of up to one year, but a number of experts feel this amounts to punishing the victim. Now a trial court in Delhi has said that a person who attempts to commit suicide...