The poverty line that the Tendulkar Committee proposes depends on reduced calorie consumption, and fails to provide for reasonable household expenditures on schooling and health.  For some years, the Government of India has been under pressure to change the norms for calculating the official poverty line. Current norms have resulted in gross and manifest underestimation of the numbers of the poor, and, consequently, in the exclusion of hundreds of millions...

At the second-floor office of 5th Pillar, a three-year-old Chennai-based non-governmental organization (NGO), 40-year-old Vijay Anand vociferously evangelizes to a crowd of 25 people on a Saturday evening. He urges the group—a mix of students and working professionals who are there to learn about how to get information on public officials—to fight corruption and shame corrupt government workers by offering the zero- rupee note that contains the promise to neither...

The Child Right to Education Bill 2009 which was passed by Parliament in last August 2009, which speaks about the free and compulsory education to all children between 6 to 14 years. On other hand there was nation wide campaign by Child rights organization CRY for “saman shiksha sabko shiksa”. Both tell about education to children. In states of Jharkhand, Bihar few areas of West Bengal and Orissa there are...

Under fire for rising prices, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has asked state governments to tackle shortages of essential supplies while promising all possible assistance from the Centre. “It will never be possible to insulate ourselves from the pulls and pressures of international demand and supply. The State Governments must forge appropriate strategies to bolster food production and tackle shortages of essential supplies”, he said. Addressing the first annual conference of...

With a large number of people living on subsistence level of income, the government has to safeguard their interest by ensuring availability of food grains at an affordable price. Success of any policy or programme to this effect depends on growth in agriculture production and procurement of wheat and rice, the main staple foodgrains. Though the performance of agriculture has not been uniform throughout and its growth rate has varied...