Public Agenda dear, here is that intellectually ruminating discussion we said we will have soon. How many poor people do we have in our country? The debate, and understanding the number is important because the classic quote goes - "you can't fix what you can't measure". If you can't count your poor, you can't check how your poverty alleviation programs are working.

Two important things around which disagreements arise are 1) How do you define a poor household? 2) How exactly do you count people using the poverty definition you accept?

First of all, the two popular stats that are quoted to start a discussions like this

• Arjun Sengupta - 77% of Indians lived on less than Rs 20 a day.
• Suresh Tendulkar co. - Poverty ratio at the all India level ... 37.2% in 2004-05. Rural poverty ... 41.8% and urban ... 25.7%. Criteria, spend per person per month. Rs446.68 in rural areas. Rs578.8 in urban. (see http://www.dnaindia.com/i...)

Some other notable stats:

Following (in italics) are the relevant excerpts from the New Indian Express report:

The government may have enacted a law empowering citizens to demand information from public authorities, but five years later many government departments are yet to take the “first step” towards proactive disclosure. Section 4(1)(b) of the RTI act mandates that all authorities under the purview of the law must index, catalogue and computerise official records to be easily accessed by the people. So far, however, few departments have paid heed to the provision, says K A Thippeswamy, Karnataka State Information Commissioner. The progress, he said, has been “almost negligible”. “They (departments) do not even have a record room to keep  documents,” he said. “They were supposed to do it within six months of the Act coming into force. But it’s been five years and they are yet to do it.’’

Want to inform regarding the lake encroachments in and around Mahadevpura and Garudachar Palya regions.Where can we complain?
 
This is serious problem seen in most areas,covering a lake/pond and constructing.This is happening everywhere including bellandur, mahadevpura, Outer ring road, Garudachar Palya.
 

Read some coverage of GIM in BusinessWorld, (Beyond Bangalore). Must say that beyond Bangalore is a nice topic for the article, here are some intereasting bits:

... projects, if they all take off, will see Rs 4 lakh crore being invested ... Almost 65 per cent of these projects are in the iron and steel sector ... in Bellary.

The stat that Karnataka needs to change is this ...

Karnataka ... single-city economy. Bengaluru ... accounts for over 55-60 per cent of the state’s GDP, according to Aroon Raman, chairman of CII-Karnataka.

An interesting angle on iron ore controversy. Will illegal activity go away, be legalized now!?