-Business Standard Says the actual poverty is much higher than suggested by the multilateral lender, adding there is lack of scientific basis in computing the poverty line The government has contested the World Bank's recently released data that showed only 12.4 per cent of India's population was poor in 2011-12, considering an expenditure cut-off of $1.9 a person a day on purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. It said the actual poverty was...

-The Hindu Rural Indians do not seem to have benefitted as much from falling inflation as their urban counterparts. While inflation has been slowing both in rural and urban areas of the country, there is a widening difference between the two as rural inflation is decelerating at a much slower pace. The resultant gap between rural and urban inflation has more than doubled over the last one year, data analysed by HSBC...

-The Times of India BATAGUDA (Odisha): Women and men working on the hillsides is a common sight when travelling through Odisha's Kandhamal district. All day, they crouch in the scorching sun, using crude tools to break large rocks into little stones. It takes each person several days to fill a 5ft-tall container with enough stones to earn about Rs 900. Most tribal women do this backbreaking work but with hardly any proteins...

-DNA State policies favouring certain food crops have rendered pulses forbiddingly expensive and the common man is feeling the pinch The huge spurt in dal prices, touching Rs180 per kilogram and even Rs200 in some cities, has come as a dampener to the festive season, and raised questions about the policies of the government. For some years now, India has been resorting to huge imports of pulses to meet domestic demand...

-Down to Earth In the run up to World Food Day on October 16, a Food and Agriculture Organization report focuses on the role of social protection in breaking the cycle of rural poverty The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) annual report on the State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) 2015 explores the potential of social protection programmes in developing countries to tackle hunger and poverty. What is social protection? Social protection programmes...