The definition of poverty has drawn closer to multidimensionality within various theoretical frameworks. However, even though basic individual needs are itrinsic to human nature regardless of historical and social contexts, the issue of defining poverty in a universal manner may be impeded by the network of interrelations that is specific to the social background of poverty.

Other than in China, where the reduction in poverty has been spectacular, progress in poverty reduction in the world during the past three decades has been modest. This slow progress and the decline in infl uence of the Washington Consensus has prompted new thinking on poverty and its reduction.

What is behind the concept of a Green Economy, advanced at the Rio-2012 conference? The case of protection and use of forests in India exemplifies the most important challenges: Green cannot be green without equity and justice.

This paper reviews the evidence on the interpersonal inclusiveness of the growth in consumption expenditure that has occurred in India over the last four decades or so. The notion of dynamic inclusiveness is framed in terms of imagined normative allocations of the inter-temporal product of growth, as dictated by notions of equity of varying orders of demandingness. There are analytical parallels between these exercises and those involved in the study of bankruptcy in "Talmudic estate problems", as well as in the determination of optimal anti-poverty budgetary allocations.