-The Business Standard C Rangarajan, former head of the former Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, answers questions on the latest official poverty estimate by a committee he'd chaired. Edited excerpts of a talk with Indivjal Dhasmana: * Your panel has suggested these poverty lines be delinked from social welfare schemes. What would be the exercise's relevance? Is it of only academic interest? Poverty ratios have already been delinked from various social programmes. The...

-The Telegraph C. Rangarajan today defended his calculation that three out of 10 in India are poor, saying the poverty numbers provided by him were not conservative estimates and the methodology was on a par with global standards. The expert group headed by Rangarajan dismissed the Suresh Tendulkar committee's methodology and estimated that the number of poor in India was much higher in 2011-12 at 29.5 per cent of the population. The BJP-led...

-The Hindu Ahmedabad: The Centre has indicated that it seeks to replicate nationally the ‘Beti Bachao Abhiyan' or ‘Save the Girl Child' campaign of the Gujarat Government. However, impact of the drive on improving the poor sex ratio in the State is still unclear with experts pointing out that the campaign has not moved beyond pursuing an awareness agenda. Prime Minister and former Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi started the campaign...

-The Hindu Business Line   Perpetual growth is a piece of nonsense. The focus should be on protecting livelihoods through sustainable means Construct a building, demolish it, reconstruct, break it down again, and go on repeating this meaningless exercise. You will have economic growth, as currently measured. But no net gain in employment during the endless cycle of construction and demolition, no net increase in productive capacity, and no appreciable change in poverty...

Two political leaders from rival camps, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, have brought the spotlight on rural sanitation and have rooted for defecation-free India by investing in toilet construction on war footing. But a recent study by a group of eminent development economists led by Prof. Dean Spears-a visiting economist at the Delhi School of Economics - has concluded that when it comes to...