Unimpressed by the progress made under the well-known KBK assistance plan, where over Rs 1,600 crore has been spent over the last decade, a concerned Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has asked the Planning Commission to immediately carry out a fresh time-bound re-evaluation of the programme with special focus on the state of poverty and hunger. The Kalahandi, Bolangir and Koraput region of Orissa, which has over the years been divided into eight districts, including the Naxal-affected district of Malkangiri, had come in for sharp focus many years back for starvation deaths largely caused by extreme poverty. The widely documented condition of people in the area became a source of major embarrassment for the country, which provoked the government to chart out a special assistance package for the KBK districts to be directly monitored by the Planning Commission. Despite these efforts, the Suresh Tendulkar Committee has noted that Orissa has the highest poverty rate of 60 per cent among all the states. And within Orissa, people in these eight districts have clearly continued to remain under the poverty line. This, sources said, flies in the face of Planning Commission reports which have indicated improvements in social and health indicators. The Prime Minister