The UN’s High-Level Panel has now issued its detailed recommendations for global poverty alleviation efforts to replace the Millennium Development Goals project, which expires in 2015. The panel, headed by UK Prime Minister David Cameron and including political leaders, diplomats and poverty experts from around the world, has called for the eradication of severe poverty by 2030 and vigorously addressing climate change, among numerous other proposals (http://www.post2015hlp.org/). The recommendations will form the basis for dialogue between UN member states over the next two years about a new global agreement on poverty and development. ASAP is interviewing experts on global poverty about the new recommendations and the likely

In this featured article, Utsa Patnaik, Professor of Economics (Retired) at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, argues that the Indian government massively undercounts the poor because the consumption standard against which poverty is measured has itself been allowed to fall over time. If the original definition of poverty line is used then three-quarters of India’s population today are poor. China also would see a dramatic increase, and the World Bank’s global poverty numbers would be revised far upward.