Critics are wrong when they say poverty has not declined. However, they are right, unknowingly though, when they say that the Planning Commission has not been entirely forthcoming about how it arrived at the poverty estimates it put out last week. The commission seems to have quietly tweaked the consumption data for 2009-10 used to estimate poverty. Hence, not only has it undercounted the poor in 2009-10 by some 18 million,...

-The Times of India Many feel the Budget is positive for the education sector, with good amounts allocated to higher education and school education exempted from service tax Pranab Mukherjee, finance minister, presented the Union Budget for the year 2012-13 on Friday, with reference to the state of the global economy and its impact on India. The Budget seems positive for the education sector, with good amounts allocated to higher education and...

Various government policies such as the Public Distribution System (PDS), mid-day meal, food for work programme, National Rural Employment Guaranty Scheme (NREGA) have failed to create food security at the household level, says a study by Gujarat Institute of Development Research. The findings of a primary survey of 110 households undertaken in two districts of two villages - a tribal district and a developed one - in Gujarat showed that about...

India’s decision-makers seem to find it difficult to see that there are children in the country. Being unable to see them, they are unable to perceive that they are hungry. In an age when we are able to use euphemisms like ‘under-nutrition’, this is perhaps not surprising. But it is disgraceful none the less.   This country has a large population of children. Fortyone per cent of its total numbers. The national...

Local procurement for anganwadis can revive rural economy in a big way The dominating noise of the grinder and the mixer speaks loudly of a new skill that the women of Binka village have mastered. The house, centre of all activity, is the busiest in this sleepy village. The women are making a nutrition mix for 270 anganwadi centres in two blocks of Odisha’s Subarnapur district. Famed for their weaving skills, the...