-The Hindu For any skill development effort to succeed, markets and industry need to play a large role in determining courses, curriculum and relevance The Union Budget 2015 paved way for the launch of a much-awaited National Skills Mission to complement Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ‘Skill India' and ‘Make in India' exhortations. However, much work needs to be done on the ground for the government to prove that this step is a...

The India Country Report 2015 on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) comes at a time when the Union Budget 2015-16 allegedly cut expenditure on several social sector schemes and programmes. This year's MDG country report says that India will fail to achieve two important targets pertaining to reducing hunger and maternal mortality by 2015, among others. Released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), the report says that India is...

-The Hindu While the rates of sexual violence in India - both reported in official statistics and unreported on the basis of household surveys - are towards the lower end of the global spectrum, data on women's autonomy in India indicate that there is a hidden emergency Having opened up a fresh conversation about the situation of women since the December 16, 2012 gang rape, has India done enough to address the...

-Indiaspend.org   A nationwide survey on youth attitudes reveals mindsets that haven't kept pace with the changing times on issues related to gender and society India is a political democracy, but India's society is not democratic. That has been a hypothesis offered by many social scientists. Now there is empirical proof - from India's hope for the future, its school and college students. * 65 per cent school...

-Economic and Political Weekly The National Sample Survey Office's survey of consumption expenditure is woefully inadequate for estimating the number of food-insecure households in India. Future surveys of NSSO need to collect information on the four pillars of food security: availability, access, nutritional adequacy/utilisation and stability. The Comprehensive Nutrition Survey in Maharashtra is an example of such a survey and appears to do a decent job of capturing the different elements...