India doubled the pace at which it has been reducing poverty in rural areas in the five years to 2009-10 by moving around 47 million over the so-called poverty line. Interestingly, the five years to 2009-10 also saw India grow the fastest in any five-year period in the past, at an average of 8.7%. In the same period, 5 million people in urban India moved above the poverty line. The numbers...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Poverty falls, but inequality worsens-Anil Padmanabhan
There are two messages, one good, the other, bad, in the latest poverty numbers released by the government. The good news first. It is obvious that poverty has declined in aggregate terms, both in rural and urban India. At a national level, it has declined by 7.4 percentage points from 37.2% in 2004-05 to 29.8% in 2009-10; rural poverty, over the same period, has declined from 41.8% to 33.8%, and urban...
More »Bihar's growth story has a poor side-Rukmini Shrinivasan
That Bihar under Nitish Kumar grew at over 10% between 2004-05 and 2009-10 is now well-known. But data released on Monday shows that in the same period, the number of poor in the state actually grew. During this five-year period, Bihar added 50 lakh people to the number of its poor, by far the largest number of any Indian state in this period. A look at Planning Commission numbers for 2009-10...
More »Save the Children from Hunger & Malnutrition
At a time when economic wisdom is seen as lying in allowing unrestrained play of economic power and cutting social sector spending, here is a report emphasising the economic sense in addressing hunger, especially child malnutrition. It also brings out the positive impact of employment guarantee scheme, which has been a thrust area of the UPA government but has seen a cut in allocation in Budget proposals for 2012-13. The report...
More »Retail inflation at 8.83 per cent in February
-PTI Retail inflation was at 8.83 per cent in February on account of higher prices of protein based items and edible oil products. Retail inflation, based on the Consumer Price Index, was 7.65 per cent the January, as per the government data release here today. Among other items, only vegetable prices saw a decline of 4.73 per cent over the February 2011 level. During the month, the prices of egg, meat and fish rose...
More »