United Nation Development Programme's India Urban Poverty Report, 2009 has pegged the number of slum dwellers in Uttar Pradesh at 44 lakh. The sample survey, which was conducted under the 58th round of the National Sample Survey Organisation, also suggests that UP is next only to Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, where 1.2 crore and 52 lakh urban poor are apparently living. The high numbers, however, it appears, are not the only...

Cash transfers cannot and should not replace the public provision of essential goods and services, but rather supplement them. Cash transfers are the latest fad of the international development industry, as the preferred strategy for poverty reduction. And now Indian policymakers are busy catching up. The idea was mooted in the Government's Economic Survey for 2010-11, and the Finance Minister made an explicit announcement in his budget speech for replacing some...

Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee presented Budget 2011-12 in Parliament on Monday promising to stimulate growth and bring down inflation. Admitting that food inflation remains a matter of concern, Pranab said that the economy could have performed better. He said that the development needs to be more inclusive while announcing increased outlay on social sector schemes. "Total food inflation is down from 20.2 per cent last year to 9.3 per cent...

Larry Summers, the recently departed Chairman of US President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, posed the following question before his trip to India last November: “What is the self-perception of the Congress as a political party?” In fact, this broad question provokes three specific ones in the domain of economics. Is the Congress the party of Jagdish Bhagwati or Amartya Sen; Nehru or Indira Gandhi; or Aruna Roy or Nandan...

Cash transfers, the latest global development fashion, involve several risks in India, not least the risk of forgetting the need for continuing structural change. WHEN I was growing up, several decades ago, middle-class society in India was always a little delayed in catching on to Western fashions whether in music or dress or in other aspects. The past decades of globalisation seemed to have changed all that. Modern communications technology...