Remember when the public was outraged at the idea that the poverty line should be 32 rupees, or 63 cents, a day in urban areas? We’ve now learned it should really be 29 rupees. And believe it or not, this is no sleight of hand to show a drop in poverty. The Planning Commission’s latest poverty estimates, released Monday evening, show a 7 percentage-point drop in India’s poor, the largest fall since...

-IANS Debunking the government's claim that the number of poor  in India has come down, a top adviser has claimed that around 70 % of the country's 1.2 billion population is poor, and stressed the need for a multi-dimensional assessment of poverty.  "The government claim that poverty has come down is not valid... there is a need for a multi-dimensional assessment of poverty as around 70% of the population is poor," National Advisory...

-PTI Observing that poverty, deprivation and destitution are Observing that poverty, deprivation and destitution are a reality in India, Ramesh has said the controversy over the Planning Commission pegging the poverty line at Rs 28.65 daily per capita consumption for cities and Rs 22.42 in rural areas started as it did not concentrate on the automatic exclusion of the beneficiaries. The Minister said that India has been a pioneer in poverty measurement...

-PTI The poverty level in Sikkim has gone down with 80,000 people now living below poverty line, according to the new official estimates for 2009-2010 released by the Planning Commission. While in 2004-2005, poverty level in Sikkim stood at 30.9 per cent with 1,70,000 people living under BPL, in the wake of the intense poverty alleviation programme initiated by the government, it has been significantly reduced in both urban and rural areas,...

It will not work at cross purposes with the Abhijit Sen committee: Ashwani Kumar In a bid to address the rising concerns, within and outside Parliament, over the latest poverty estimates released by the Planning Commission, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday declared that a technical group would be put in place to come up a new Methodology to capture the incidence of poverty. Talking to reporters on the sidelines of a...