In this report, ESCAP explores the future of urbanization in Asia and the Pacific, focusing on the dynamic shifts in the region’s urban landscape. It highlights the region’s demographic transformations, including population ageing, and the persistent challenges of urban poverty and inequality. The analysis covers urban areas of all sizes, …
New scheme for land to homeless poor The National Council for Land Reforms (NCLR), which held its maiden meeting on Tuesday under the chairmanship of rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, proposed to launch a new scheme for “homestead rights to provide land for each homeless rural poor.” The council, which …
State Panchayat and Rural Development Minister Rockybul Hussain has also admitted that the demand for jobs under the MGNREGA is decreasing in the State GUWAHATI: The status of the implementation of India’s flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), a rural job guarantee scheme, is very poor in …
Anew expert panel to identify the poor has been tasked with reviewing whether and how other criteria can be combined with the consumption basket. Though the focus remains on methodological issues, there is a real opportunity for a long overdue shift in the poverty debate from Garibi Hatao, aam aadmi …
This paper revisits, with new data, the changes in the distribution of global poverty towards middle-income countries (MICs). In doing so it discusses an implied ‘poverty paradox’ – the fact that most of the world’s extreme poor no longer live in the world’s poorest countries. The paper outlines the distribution …
An ambitious plan for poverty eradication is set to benefit thousands of below poverty line households in Bharatpur and make the district poverty-free by 2015. Through a well-planned strategy for self and wage employment generation, the plan would benefit 11,000 BPL families of the total of 49,394 such households in …
The Planning Commission has distanced itself from the government’s decision to appoint a committee to reconsider the way poverty numbers are estimated, indicating a deep divide between the political masters and the technocrats at institution charged with laying down development agenda for the country. On Thursday, Minister for Planning Ashwini …
The government on Thursday set up an expert technical group headed by Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) Chairman C. Rangarajan to review the Tendulkar Committee methodology for estimating poverty and overhaul the norms in keeping with the present-day prices. The move follows all-round criticism of the Planning Commission's estimates …
Union Minister of Environment and Forests Jayanthi Natarajan has said that the research and extension activities carried out by the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education have positively helped in meeting the livelihood needs of the rural poor, tribals and those living in the fringe forests and facilitating opening …
LUCKNOW: Facing flak for the tardy pace of investigation in the NRHM scam, the CBI has demanded for extra hands to help it cope up with the work pressure. In a letter sent to DGP UP last Monday, its Delhi headquarters has requested additional "manpower and material" in view of …
New Delhi About 60 per cent of India's rural population lives on less than Rs 35 a day and nearly as many in cities live on Rs 66 a day, reveals a government survey on income and expenditure. "In terms of average per capita daily expenditure, it comes out to …
In China, and elsewhere, long-term economic development and poverty alleviation need to be balanced against the likelihood of ecological failure. Here, we show how paleoenvironmental records can provide important multidecadal perspectives on ecosystem services (ES). More than 50 different paleoenvironmental proxy records can be mapped to a wide range of …
This note takes stock of poverty research to date, proposes a set of ‘building blocks’ or lessons learnt in terms of poverty policy analysis and research, and identifies challenges and future directions for research
The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation is funding a pilot project to enable the state’s farmers to reverse the environmental degradation and rural poverty in the state by applying scientific methods to groundwater management. Baseline studies jointly conducted by the FAO, Centre and state government have identified seven districts …
The professional divide on Tendulkar’s estimation goes a long way back A committee is being set up to devise yet another methodology to estimate poverty in India. The step has led to some unhappiness among economists and experts that it amounts to junking the services and competence of an expert …
Though much intellectual energy has been expended on the “poverty problem” in India, the debate simply does not take into account the highly unequal social context in which poverty is produced and reproduced. Can we reflect on the right not to be poor without taking on these background inequalities? Arguably, …
Analysis of poverty and its dimensions are various as the ways in which poverty affects the daily sustenance of the poor. Poverty, many a times is simply viewed as an issue of income. What poverty means for the poor is a wide range of dynamic aspects. This paper presents results …
Gangtok: 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 …
An exogenously defined poverty line yields poverty headcounts between any two points in time that are a net outcome of the two-way traffic into and out of poverty. This paper argues that, for the rural Indian context, where housing is too lumpy and illiquid to be used for consumption smoothing, …
The Tendulkar Committee’s recommendations on poverty have run out of takers, at least in the political circles. Under pressure from all sides over its estimate of people living below the poverty line, the Planning Commission on Thursday effectively abandoned the Tendulkar panel’s estimation method. A committee would be constituted to …
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 …
