UP, Gujarat, UT, Punjab- Election 2007

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The unravelling of Uttar Pradesh
Tavleen Singh
As someone who believes that India is a rich country that has been impoverished because of the incompetence of our political class, I have watched the election campaign in Uttar Pradesh with growing dismay. You only need to walk down a street in Mumbai or Delhi to see that poverty caused by bad governance is the only issue in Uttar Pradesh.
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This was lucidly confirmed, a couple of weeks ago, by the Chief Economic Adviser to the Finance Ministry, Ashok Lahiri. This is what he told Outlook magazine: “The Ninth Plan (1997-2002) document said that the <b>amount of money we spend for poverty alleviation — around Rs 40,000 crore — would have given around Rs 8,000 per month per poor family </b>, which would be sufficient to buy three kilos of food grain every day.”
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