-Frontline The Central government's proposal to hand over the supply of supplementary nutrition to NGOs in the name of "community participation" is surely an invitation for private profiteering on the back of this supposedly public scheme. ENSURING safe and healthy conditions for the reproduction of the population is obviously the most fundamental requirement of any society. So the progress of a society can be determined (and indeed is routinely judged) by the...

-The Hindu Every hour 25 women fall victim to crimes; 11 suffer cruelty by husbands and other relatives; three are raped; and there is one dowry death. Horrific crimes against women have, in fact, continued unabated. What is worse is that there has been an acceleration of such crimes in recent years, with the annual rate rising from 5.9 per cent in 2006 to 7.8 per cent during 2006-2011. Cases of domestic...

-Live Mint Some commentators dismiss the seriousness of India's nutritional crisis as it fails to account for genetic differences With one in two children malnourished in India, child malnutrition is considered to be among the biggest challenges facing the country. But are these figures highly exaggerated? The answer is a resounding yes, according to Columbia University economist Arvind Panagariya, who believes that the international standards used to measure nutritional attainments of...

-The Hindu Mumbai: Unsafe abortions are killing a woman every two hours in this country, according to estimates and calculations correlating data on maternal mortality ratio (MMR) and Sample Registration System (SRS) data by Ipas, India, an international NGO working on increasing access to safe abortion services. The last nationwide MMR data giving details of causes of maternal deaths was in SRS 2001-03, said advisor, policy for Ipas India, Medha Gandhi. While...

-The Hindu The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the Rs. 22,507-crore National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) that seeks to address healthcare challenges in towns and cities with focus on urban poor. The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the Rs. 22,507-crore National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) that seeks to address healthcare challenges in towns and cities with focus on urban poor. The scheme will now be introduced as a sub-mission under the National...