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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 politica

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 on poverty released in this March and the controversy it generated in and outside Parliament on capping the poverty line at a daily consumption of Rs 28.65 per capita in cities and at Rs 22.42 in rural areas.

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

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.

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 be about Rs 35 in rural and Rs 66 in urban India. About 60 per cent of the population live with these expenditures or less in rural and urban areas," said Director General of National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) J Dash in his preface to the report.

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

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 ES categories and subcategories. Lake sediments are particularly suitable for reconstructing records of regulating services, such as soil stability, sediment regulation, and water purification, which are often less well monitored.

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 in Andhra Pradesh to effectively implement the best practices in sustainable cropping patterns to combat climate change.

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 like the late Suresh Tendulkar, whose study is sought to be replaced.

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, the right not to be poor is best articulated as a subset of the generic right to equality. The concept of equality is, however, not self-explanatory. In many circles, redistributive justice has replaced equality. It is therefore time to ask the question – equality for what?

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