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...

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,...

A wretched, forsaken corner of the world’s biggest democracy SURROUNDED by troops, the suspected militant saw the vehicle already waiting to take his corpse to the morgue. He expected to die, like many others, in an “encounter” with the security forces. In jail he told a human-rights activist—himself held on charges of waging war against the state and tortured with electric shocks—that he probably owed his life to a piece of...

Likely to be rolled out gradually, in 3 to 6 months from now  Once fully implemented, the scheme may touch the lives of 20 crore women “Highly subsidised” sanitary napkins will be supplied to women above poverty line To boost female health and hygiene in rural India, the Union government is working on a scheme to provide women living below poverty line (BPL) with free sanitary napkins. The scheme, which will eventually...

When the government passed the Right to Information (RTI) Act in 2005, it should have added a statutory warning: exercising this right may be extremely injurious to health. Shashidhar Mishra of Begusarai, who was murdered by unknown assailants last Sunday, is the second RTI activist to be killed in a month for perhaps knowing too much. Attacks on RTI activists have emerged as a disturbing trend of late, especially in...