-The Hindustan Times    Poor households of urban India are emerging hotspots for hunger and ill-health and children there live in worse conditions than in rural areas, says a new UN report released on Wednesday.   The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) report -- state of the world’s children 2012 -- say that like most parts of the world, children living in around 49,000 slums in India are "invisible". Half of these slums are in...

The world has achieved its first Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty in half ahead of the 2015 deadline, a study by the World Bank shows. The bank defines extreme poverty as living on under $1.25 per day, adjusted for purchasing power parity. According to the report, released this week, 1.29 billion people, or 22 percent of the developing world’s population, live below $1.25 a day, down from 52 percent...

Medical Council of India failed to start rural health practitioner course The Delhi High Court on Monday issued contempt notices to the health ministry and the Medical Council of India (MCI), the country’s apex body for medical education, for not starting rural health practitioner course and thus failing to comply with its order. The bench of Justice Vipin Sanghi issued notices to P K Pradhan, secretary with the Union Ministry of Health...

Women farmers suffer gross bias a global meet will look to change this Nearly half of the agricultural work is handled by women in developing countries and India is no exception. Yet, strategies for the development of agriculture are directed primarily at men. Barely five per cent of the extension efforts and resources are targeted at farm women. This failing, predictably, costs a good amount owing to loss of a part...

Is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGA) a poverty buster? Or is it a job destroyer? The answer seems to be both, though the scheme of late, has been bedevilled by corruption and many states have lost their enthusiasm for it, forcing the rural development ministry to revamp the scheme last week (read here about the changes). While the scheme has been attacked for many reasons – bloating rural...