Adolescence is a period when physical and neuro-maturational changes take place in the body of a young girl. Although it is illegal marrying a girl under the age of 18 years as per the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006, adolescent girls in our country are compelled to marry and attain pregnancy that adversely affects well-being and outcomes of both mothers and their children. Latest available data shows that societal norms...

-Down to Earth Arun Shah, a Muzaffarpur-based paediatrician who has researched on the syndrome, says the fruit is only a triggering factor for malnourished children Litchi is being most commonly blamed for the Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) outbreak in Bihar. The mystery fever has already killed more than 100 children in Muzaffarpur district, renowned for its litchi crop. However, experts say it is grossly wrong to blame this fruit Down To Earth spoke...

-The Hindu The new GDP series has some methodological and sampling problems Former Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian recently claimed in a paper that India’s GDP growth from 2011-12 to 2016-17 was likely to have been overestIMAted. The Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council has rejected this claim, stating that his paper would “not stand the scrutiny of academic or policy research standards”. In a conversation moderated by T.C.A. Sharad Raghavan, Pronab Sen...

In a recent blog post, Columbia University professor Arvind Panagariya mentions that the critics of the present Prime Minister of India failed to underscore ‘employment rate’ -- flip side of unemployment rate -- that stood at nearly 94 percent according to the report on Periodic Labour Force Survey 2017-18. A recent article by Dr. Vikas Rawal and Prachi Bansal, however, points out that in order to understand the problem of joblessness...

-The Indian Express The draft law was submitted by the IMA to the Ministry in 2017 — it had demanded a central law for the protection of doctors, and has raised it again in the wake of the NRS Medical College and Hospital incident in Kolkata. New Delhi: Last Saturday, when he wrote to Chief Ministers asking them to frame laws for protection of medical professionals, Union Health Minister Dr Harsh...