After the public outcry over the controversial Rs 28 a day poverty formulation, the Planning Commission has put the poverty debate in a deep freeze with the government setting up yet another expert group to take a relook at the existing methodology to determine the number of poor in the country. The decision, taken under public pressure, can be interpreted as rejection of the Tendulkar Committee report based on which the...
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Fresh look at definition of ‘poor’
-The Telegraph The government today set up an expert committee to suggest a new methodology for determining who is poor and who is not, following widespread condemnation of its existing criteria last year. However, the five-member committee headed by C. Rangarajan, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, will also examine the existing methodology, which was suggested by a previous expert panel formed under Suresh Tendulkar. Tendulkar’s methodology was solely based on...
More »Parliament's say extends to the classroom-Prabhat Patnaik
It was entirely correct for the Lok Sabha to have intervened in the textbook row as it represents the people, and their right to an egalitarian society, better than any group of “experts” Too many red herrings have entered into the debate over the removal of the cartoon from the class XI Political Science textbook of the NCERT. Let us, to start with, get these out of the way. First, the...
More »The austerity of the affluent-P Sainath
A rural Indian spending Rs. 22.50 a day would not be considered poor by a Planning Commission whose Deputy Chairman's foreign trips between May and October last year cost a daily average of Rs. 2.02 lakh Pranab Mukherjee's stirring call for austerity tugs at the national tear ducts. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has pleaded for it in the past and watched his flock embrace it creatively. With the Finance Ministry even...
More »Land and caste-Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta
Jatav residents of Ramgarh in U.P. resist attempts by members of a powerful community to grab their land by violent means. IN what could be considered one of the worst incidents of vendetta against Dalits in the National Capital Region (NCR), members of the Dalit Jatav community were beaten up brutally by some members of the dominant Gujjar community in Ramgarh village in the Greater Noida area of Uttar Pradesh...
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