-Outlook The number of poor in the country declined to 27 crore in 2011-12, from 40.74 crore in 2004-05, Minister of State for Planning and Parliamentary Affairs Rajeev Shukla said today. "The latest data of large sample survey on household consumer expenditure has been collected by NSSO in its 68th round conducted in 2011-12. "As per the estimates of Planning Commission, the number of persons living below the poverty line in the country...

A new report by National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) reveals that despite the nutritional value of millets, otherwise known as coarse cereals*, there has been a drastic reduction in the area under its cultivation from 36.34 million hectares in 1955-56 to 18.6 million hectares in 2011-12 thanks to the wrong agricultural and price policies adopted by the Government (see table 1, and the links below). Based on previous National...

-Frontline The tussle within some Central government Ministries over proposed cuts in the budget for rural development schemes has affected a promise made to senior citizens. THEIR wizened faces said it all. Though there was disappointment, there was also a glimmer of hope that their trek to the national capital would not go in vain. For almost a month, senior citizens, most of them poor, had been pouring into New Delhi from...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: More people are smoking in India now, 110 million, compared to just 74.5 million smokers over three decades back, despite smoking being recognized as the third biggest health risk for Indians and despite all the anti-tobacco and smoke-free laws. While smoking prevalence among men had gone down in 2012, it remains unchanged at 3.2% since 1980 among women. In fact, India with 12.1 million women...

-The Indian Express Agricultural GDP is underestimated due to inaccurate non-cereal data. It started with a mundane question: what is the chicken population in India? There are glaring inconsistencies in the available data. The National Sample Survey Organisation's (NSSO's) surveys show a 20 per cent annual growth of chicken consumption between 2005 and 2010. But according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the production of chicken meat only rose 10 per...