The only programme the UPA government has to provide Pensions to BPL individuals is plagued by mismanagement, delays in disbursement and underutilised funds. The National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP), allocated Rs 5,700 crore every year, covers five major schemes—the Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme (IGNOAPS), the Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme (IGNWPS), the Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension Scheme, the National Family Benefit Scheme and the Annapurna...

In April, India’s Planning Commission accepted recommendations put forth by the so-called Tendulkar Committee on a new poverty headcount for the country. Constituted by the Planning Commission under economist Suresh D Tendulkar, the committee, after four years and a new methodology, arrived at a new figure for the number of Indians living below the poverty line: 37.2 percent, ten points higher than the previous official figure. With the government’s subsequent...

In June 1991, the country embarked on a bold adventure by exposing to market vicissitudes its insulated manufactories, regulated (but pockmarked with soft spots) financial markets and inexperienced economic players. An economy, in those days, was about people, not giant factories and ships with riches. Though successive governments have secured the reformative underpinnings of the liberalisation process, it is to the credit of players in India that the sublime quest...

Chanchala Devi always wanted a house. Not a mud-and-stick hut, like her current home in this desolate village in the mineral-rich, corruption-corroded state of Jharkhand, but a proper brick-and-mortar house. When she heard that a government program for the poor would give her about $700 to build that house, she applied immediately. As an impoverished day labourer from a downtrodden caste, she was an ideal candidate for the grant. Yet she...

They plan to raise bank loans to build their own homes and take up agriculture Landless Dalit families in a Kancheepuram village have used the Right to Information (RTI) Act to prompt the district administration to hand over land that was originally allotted to them several years ago, thanks to the initiative of a grassroots NGO. A total of 106 Dalit families in Alisoor village were allotted 100 sq m...