This book discusses a new poverty agenda for Asia and the role of social policies in economic transformation and reducing poverty. The poverty-reduction agenda is well known. So is the debate over poverty. No one disputes the fact that poverty of income (or expenditure, as countries such as India do not collect household data on income) is an imperfect measure of poverty, as there are non-income dimensions, too. Consequently, we...

We condemn in the strongest possible terms the recent murder of NREGA activist Niyamat Ansari in Kope Gram Panchayat (Latehar District, Jharkhand), as well as a similar attempt — the same day — on the life of his associate Bhukhan Singh. Briefly, this murder was the culmination of a series of acts of harassment, including at least one earlier attempt on Bhukhan and Niyamat's lives. Bhukhan and Niyamat fearlessly continued to...

World Bank president Robert Zoellick recently listed nine measures that the G20 should adopt under its current French presidency. These range from improving information about grain stocks and developing better weather-forecasting methods to strengthening social Safety Nets for the poor and helping small farmers benefit from tenders from humanitarian purchasers such as the World Food Programme . These measures tackle only the symptoms of the global food system's weaknesses, leaving the...

This article documents and then examines the various benefits that, it is claimed, will flow from linking the Unique Identity number with the public distribution system and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It filters the unfounded claims, which arise from a poor understanding of how the PDS and NREGS function, from the genuine ones. On the latter, there are several demanding conditions that need to be met in order...

India’s drug regulator has refused to disclose key information about a controversial government study that provided Indian girls a vaccine designed to protect them from cervical cancer, amplifying suspicions about the study’s objectives. The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) has refused to release for public scrutiny the study’s protocols, which are expected to contain information about its purpose and methodology, a set of health activists said yesterday. The Union government had...