-Down to Earth Our policy makers should move away from the income criterion for estimating poverty and take cognisance of other indicators Amid mounting criticism and heated debates about the poverty line, a challenge has resurfaced to examine whether there could be a single non-monetary criterion of estimating poverty. A poverty line is a monetary cut-off point below which a person is deemed to be poor. Thus, any attempt to measure poverty...

-PTI GWALIOR: Rural Development Ministry would join hands with a Leading defence research organisation to push eco-friendly bio-toilets in villages in four states where the menace of open defecation remained unaddressed. Impressed by the achievement of the Defence Research and Development Establishment (DRDE) in developing low cost bio-toilets, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh today said that members of Women Self Help Groups from Bihar, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh would be...

-The Hindu The National Food Security Bill (NFSB) has been derailed yet again in the past few days due to continuous disruptions of Parliament. The Congress Party made an ill-advised attempt to pass the bill on August 20, Rajiv Gandhi's birth anniversary. Sure enough, the opposition parties went out of their way to scuttle this move and fell over each other to disrupt the Lok Sabha that day. This is only...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday rolled out the ambitious and "game-changer" food security scheme in Delhi, Haryana and Uttarakhand after party Leaders attacked Narendra Modi and the opposition for the delay in passage of the bill in Parliament. Unveiling the scheme by handing over food grain packets and Aadhar-based smart cards to 12 women beneficiaries in the capital, she lauded the UPA government for bringing "revolutionary changes" in...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: A parliamentary panel has asked the Centre to bring parity between wages under the rural employment guarantee programme and those given by states for agricultural labour under the Minimum Wages Act. The recommendation of the panel, headed by BJP Leader Sumitra Mahajan, comes as a shot in the arm for the rural development ministry's proposal to link wages under the rural employment programme and the minimum wages...