This paper offers a comprehensive analysis of poverty in India. It shows that no matter which of the two official poverty lines is used, poverty has declined steadily in all states and for all social and religious groups. Accelerated growth between fiscal years 2004–2005 and 2009–2010 led to an accelerated decline in poverty rates.
A common continuing criticism of the economic reforms in India has been that despite accelerated growth and all-around poverty reduction, the country continues to suffer from worse child malnutrition than nearly all Sub-Saharan African countries with lower per capita incomes. This paper argues that this narrative, nearly universally accepted around the world, is false. It is the artefact of a faulty methodology that the World Health Organisation has pushed and the United Nations has supported.
While the measured response of the government to overall inflation is to be admired, its performance with respect to food-price inflation cannot escape criticism, says Arvind Panagariya
THE subject of inflation, which occupied the media and the politicians in 2008 until the global financial crisis put an abrupt end to it, has returned to the centre stage of the policy debate.
The issue concerning genetically-modified crops is not that Bt brinjal was consigned to cold storage but the process that led to its approval being held in abeyance, says Arvind Panagariya
