National Sample Survey

Conceptual and operational issues for constructing multidimensional poverty indices in India are discussed and the possibilities of its application for strategic interventions are examined in this article. It argues that questions concerning the selection of indicators, data sources, weightages, threshold limits, etc, have to be addressed through a consultative process, keeping it above the short-term politics of the regime.

India has been on a rising path of economic development since independence, but it is still predominantly rural where 70% of population lives. This paper attempts to analyse changes in living standards of the rural poor, basically rural labour, in terms of nutritional level since the 1980s at all-India and state levels so that correct policy measures may be initiated to improve their lives. By using data from the National Sample Survey Office, it is found that there is, in general, an improvement in nutritional levels of rural labour in India since the 1980s. However, for rural India, the findings of reinforce some of the results of the previous literature. However, recent thick rounds of the National Sample Survey show some improvement in their nutritional level, which is a positive sign.

Examining the Centralised Online Real-time Electronic Public Distribution System reforms introduced by the Government of Chhattisgarh to understand the processes and conditions under which such reforms strengthen accountability and affect the delivery of public services, it is found that while earlier reforms have been successful, the contribution of CORE PDS has been useful but limited. A significant finding was that technological fixes for social protection programmes are only feasible insofar as they work within the political logic of the context in question. CORE PDS reforms could not address the issues of power imbalances between shop owners and cardholders which continue to shape interactions between them. Introducing transparency, accountability and quasi-market reforms in this context offered limited possibilities in what they could achieve.

The release of the Provisional Population Totals based on Population Census 2001 necessitates revisions in the estimates of population and of workforce for 1993-94 and 1999-2000 and hence also in the estimates of labour productivity. Besides carrying out the necessary revisions in the size of the workforce (and in labour productivity), this paper offers a detailed industrial distribution of the workforce as well as an occupation distribution of the workforce based on the additional tables now available from the NSS 55th Round Employment-Unemployment Survey.