Poverty

How Mumbai's 'Share My Dabba' plan gets food left over in tiffins to hungry street kids

Enjoy your lunch? Now here's a chance to share that joy with someone less fortunate. The 'Share My Dabba' initiative aims to get food left over in dabbas to hungry street children, using just a tiny Share sticker and the extensive dabbawala network. The initiative is a joint effort between Happy Life Welfare Society and The Dabbawala Foundation.Abhinav Tripathi, who uploaded the video explained that the red 'Share sticker' gives a system that can work within the dabbawala's existing system.The Share sticker dabbas are simply kept aside while the dabbawala's sort the ones without stickers. In that window, volunteers give the food to children and repack the dabbas. Now the dabbawalas can sort these dabbas.

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Centre will come up with NULM policy soon, says Maken

Hyderabad: The Central Government would soon come up with a new policy of National Urban Livelihood Mission (NULM) to alleviate poverty in urban areas, Union Minister Ajay Maken said in Hyderabad on Friday. Maken, Union Minister for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, is on a two-day visit to the Andhra Pradesh capital to study and review the urban poverty alleviation programmes in urban areas implemented by the state government. He...  

Champions are not made in gyms: Dr R Durgadoss

A terrorist group strikes the world by planting viruses into global computer systems From a satellite orbiting the earth. This act of cyber terrorism disrupts air traffic Systems, interferes with the control systems for water and electricity, blocks commercial communications, crashes various network systems, gains access to Secret military information and defaces various websites. In light of this cyber, the world is facing a chaotic situation. Shiv, a young, celebrated...  

South India ahead of North due to better governance

Bangalore: The quality of governance and better leadership has led to southern states surging ahead of their northern counterparts, widening the gap in terms of per capita income and poverty between the south and north, says a study. Per capita incomes in the south (Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala) have risen fast and poverty has declined in recent years and the reason is quality of governance, better leadership...  

Failure to pass Food Bill is unfortunate: Amartya Sen

Greater Noida: Noble laureate Amratya Sen on Saturday said it is unfortunate that government has not been able to push through the Food Security Bill that sought to provide subsidised foodgrains to people below poverty line. "It is unfortunate that we are not able to pass the Food Security Bill because Parliament is not able to meet", he said during a seminar at the ADB annual meet here. He further...  

'Only 26.7 per cent below poverty line by 2015'

Bangkok: India on Monday said that with continuous and concerted efforts, people living below poverty line will be down to 26.7 per cent by 2015, but improving sanitation facilities in the country still remains a challenge. The visiting Minister of State for Commerce and Industry of India, Dr Dagubatti Purandeswari told the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) meet here that for a country...  

World Bank says to lend India up to $5 billion a year

Washington: The World Bank said on Thursday it would lend between $3 billion to $5 billion annually to India under a new four-year plan that focuses development projects on the country's poorest states. The World Bank said in a statement that 60 per cent of the financing will go to government-backed development projects and half of this, or 30 per cent, will go to the country's poorer states. Under the...  

Will lend India up to $5 billion a year, says World Bank

Washington: The World Bank said on Thursday it would lend between $3 billion to $5 billion annually to India under a new four-year plan that focuses development projects on the country's poorest states. The World Bank said in a statement that 60 per cent of the financing will go to government-backed development projects and half of this, or 30 per cent, will go to the country's poorer states. Under the...  

WB: Tea garden workers seek CM's permission to kill themselves

Workers of tea gardens in Jalpaiguri district in West Bengal are battling acute poverty and unemployment since the tea gardens shut down 10 years ago. The workers are now seeking permission to kill themselves as the extreme situation has even driven many to sell off their women to the human trafficking trade. ...  

Pope urges dialogue with Islam, more help for the poor

Pope Francis urged the West on Friday to intensify dialogue with Islam and appealed to the world to do more to combat poverty and protect the environment. Speaking in Italian, the new pontiff said richer countries should fight what he called "the spiritual poverty of our times" by re-forging links with God. ...  

Upgradation index to be framed on slum conditions, says Ajay Maken

The central government will monitor the periodical up-gradation of slums in the country by making a "slum upgradation index", a union minister said on Thursday. ...  

Nepal reducing poverty faster than India: Oxford study

Nepal and Bangladesh are reducing poverty faster compared to India, according to a new study based on the multidimensional poverty index developed at the University of Oxford and used by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in its Human Development Reports. ...  

Cabinet to meet today, likely to clear Food Security Bill

UPA II's most ambitious bill, the Food Bill, is a step closer to becoming law. The Cabinet is meeting amidst strong hopes that it will clear the Food Bill for passing in Parliament. The Congress believes the Food Bill, which was first tabled in 2011 will be a game changer. ...  

PM in attack mode, says 'men of envy' disparage everything

Expressing confidence that growth will bounce back to 7-8 per cent, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Friday that opposition should be more objective in assessing his government. Again taking on the opposition, an acerbic Manmohan Singh also said that "men of envy" disparage everything. ...  

Meghalaya polls: PM promises to empower tribal bodies

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on February 15 promised to empower tribal governing bodies and improve women's representation in decision-making bodies in poll-bound Meghalaya. "We will empower self-governing bodies and work for greater say of women in administrative decision making as we believe that this will help Meghalaya get more benefits from Central schemes being implemented in the state," the Prime Minister told an election meeting at the Polo grounds here....  

Indian athletes win 46 medals at Special Winter Olympics

Children battling poverty and disability bringing medals home is an example of triumph over adversity. The Indian contingent at the Special Winter Olympics in South Korea made the country proud as it won 46 medals. ...  

AP: Pochampally's sari weavers struggle to survive

Pochampally: Pera Kamalana sits in a small room of her house, spinning the dyed yarn that will bring alive beautiful ikat designs on the nine-yard silk sari Pochampally is famous for. Wearing a polyester sari herself, Kamalana's life is, however, an irony and hardly as exotic as the timeless creations her loom gives birth to. "I can't afford to wear a Pochampally silk sari," Kamalana told IANS, when asked if...  

India, Pak should jointly combat poverty: Nitish Kumar

Lahore: Batting for peace, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday said India and Pakistan should jointly combat hunger and poverty rather than fighting each other. On his first visit to Pakistan, Kumar said he would always measure his trip to this country in terms of the enormous love he has received from the people. "The amount of love I have received from the people here can't be artificial. In...  

'India can learn from Pak's poverty alleviation scheme'

Islamabad: Poverty is a cross-border phenomenon and India could learn from the experiences of the Benazir Income Support Programme, the Pakistan government's flagship poverty alleviation scheme, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said on Tuesday. Kumar, currently on a week-long visit to Pakistan with a delegation of ministers and lawmakers from Bihar, was briefed on the BISP by Farzana Raja, the federal minister who heads the programme launched in the name...  

Bharatpur: Pharma firm's initiative to end poverty

Bharatpur: Corporate social responsibility is becoming more than a buzz word. A pharma company's CSR initiative is aiming to make Bharatpur in Rajasthan, India's first poverty free district in the next few years. Lupin Foundation, the pharma company, is helping employ thousands of villagers. Shyam Kishore, 30, is a poultry farmer. In five years, his life has changed, and all for the better. Starting with 300 chicks in a small...