-The Times of India   The Rs 32 per capita urban poverty line is a measure only of extreme poverty, not of acceptable consumption-linked daily expenditure. Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and rural development minister Jairam Ramesh have clarified this. They've also stated that prevailing BPL figures won't determine selection of the beneficiaries of social schemes. This hopefully will put an end to the high-decibel protests of opposition parties and...

-India Today   Terming the implementation of UPA's flagship programme MNREGA as "patchy", Rural Development MinisterJairam Rameshon Monday expressed concern at leakage of funds meant for the scheme but hoped that the proposed 'NREGA 2.0' will deal with the problems in the coming times. "There are serious, serious shortcomings in its implementation...The record of its implementation is very patchy...and therefore, we have a huge challenge," Ramesh said at a programme here. He said while...

The government of India's Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY)a¦ is now internationally recognised for its innovative approach to harnessing information technology to reach the poor, says the World Bank in the context of the smart card-based cashless health insurance scheme. The RSBY has now been picked up by UNDP as one of the 19 schemes worldwide for its publication, Sharing Innovative Experience: Social Protection Floor Success Stories. About 20 million...

-The Economic Times   More than 25 of the top economists of the country have written an open letter against the Planning Commission poverty line and said that the public distribution system should be universalized. "We do not consider the official national poverty lines set by the Planning Commission, at Rs 32 and Rs 26 per capita per day for urban and rural areas respectively, to be acceptable benchmarks to measure the extent...

In a significant move, prominent economists on Monday made a forceful plea to delink food entitlements from the “faulty” poverty measures put out by the Planning Commission. Asserting that under-nutrition was much more widespread in the country than income poverty “however defined,” the economists sought restoration of the universal Public Distribution System (PDS) “as the best way forward'' in combating hunger and poverty. “This is not only feasible within the available fiscal...