-TheWire.in To mark one year since the death of 11-year-old Santoshi Kumari in Jharkhand, activists have released a list of hunger-related deaths in India since 2015. New Delhi: A year after the ‘starvation’ death of an 11-year-old girl, Santoshi Kumari, in Jharkhand’s Simdega district, activists have compiled a list of 56 alleged hunger-related deaths since 2015 across the country, of which 42 were in 2017 and 2018. Kumari’s death led to a spate...

-Down to Earth For every million rupees spent on agricultural research, 328 people are pulled out of poverty. In contrast, the same amount spent on power subsidies brings only 23 people come out of poverty. The message is clear. With the Union elections only a few months away, the Centre should prioritise capital investments over populist subsidies to deliver on its promise of strengthening the farm sector. This is important, especially when the...

-Newsclick.in The vision of true human development in India will become a reality only when patterns of exclusion and lack of social empowerment are driven out of the lives of the disadvantaged sections. India may have jumped one notch up in its ranking in the latest Human Development Index -- at 131 among 188 countries -- the growing inequalities in the country are a serious cause for concern. The HDI is the composite...

-Livemint.com Ecologist Madhav Gadgil, whose report on Western Ghats was rejected by the Kerala government, on what caused the Kerala floods and how the rebuilding process should be carried out Ernakulam (Kerala): Submitted seven years ago on 31 August 2011, ecologist Madhav Gadgil’s report on the biodiverse Western Ghats—a portion of which falls in Kerala—had warned that the combination of massive ecological destruction and extreme weather events trigger disaster. His words proved...

-The Telegraph Hunger kills. In India, it does so with alarming frequency. Three girls aged eight, four and two died in the national capital last week; the autopsy showed that their stomach and bowels were "absolutely empty". This was in spite of the fact that the oldest girl at least went to school and should have been receiving mid-day meals. The blame, as usual, was at first apportioned to exclusion. The...