-FAO   Food price volatility featuring high prices is likely to continue and possibly increase, making poor farmers, consumers and countries more vulnerable to poverty and food insecurity, the United Nations' three Rome-based agencies said in the global hunger report published today.    Small, import-dependent countries, particularly in Africa, are especially at risk.  Many of them still face severe problems following the world food and economic crises of 2006-2008, the UN Food and...

In planning, pursuit of profit was not seen as being in the social interest in the post-Independence years, but now profit is the sole motive. FOR two decades now the Government of India has pursued a policy of accelerated liberalisation, dismantling controls, diluting regulations and making the state a facilitator of private investment. It is not that the presence of the state has diminished during this period, but that its role...

There are two ways to identify the poor: in terms of how much they lack, and in terms of what you can do for them. To begin with, India's poverty line was set at the total (food and non-food) expenditure observed for the person who was just about consuming a nutritionally adequate number of calories. In subsequent years, rural and urban poverty lines were adjusted to take inflation on board, without adjusting...

-The Hindu   Faced with strong reactions to its affidavit on the poverty line estimates filed in the Supreme Court on Monday, the Planning Commission may re-visit the issue and, if necessary, file an amendment in the court. Sources in the Commission indicated that another committee of experts was likely to be set up to dispel the “confusion” and arrive at a more realistic estimate of poverty numbers that were “multi-dimensional” and to...

The Planning Commission, headed by the prime minister, has filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court quantifying the daily poverty line for an adult as Rs 26 in rural, and Rs 32 in urban India. At today’s relentlessly increasing prices, Rs 26 will not get a manual worker even one nutritious meal a day — leave alone the 2,400 calories he is required to eat to enable him to work,...