-The Hindustan Times Now that India's "polio-free" status is less than three months away -- the nation's last polio case of a two-year-old girl in the Panchla block of Howrah, West Bengal, was reported on January 13, 2011 -- the Centre is going the extra mile to stop re-infection. This year, 296 polio cases were reported till October 16. In 2012, there were 171 in the same period and 223 till December...

-Newsclick.in Recent studies have shown that even as India fares better than many developing regions of the world on several indicators of growth and development such as GDP, per capita, Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), literacy, life expectancy, etc., the number of malnourished children in India is significantly high. What explains this paradox? The Union Cabinet recently approved a multi-sectoral nutritional programme proposed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development to reduce...

Released two days before the World Food Day i.e. 16 October, the Global Hunger Index 2013 report paints a gloomy picture of India. Its score of fighting hunger has improved only marginally in the past two decades while many of its neighbors have moved up from strength to strength. (See full report below)   The report entitled: The Challenge of Hunger: Building Resilience to achieve Food and Nutrition Security says that India...

-Down to Earth People prefer to eat less nutritious food than go hungry, says FAO GLOBAL CHRONIC hunger has declined significantly despite sharp increases in the prices of primary food products since 2008. Price hikes have limited effect on consumers, states Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in the report, The State of Food Insecurity in the World. According to FAO, chronic hunger is when a person does not regularly get enough food to...

-The Times of India Sixty-six years after independence, India has the dubious distinction of being home to half the number of modern day slaves in the world. The first Global Slavery Index has estimated that 13.3 to 14.7 million people live like slaves in the country - roughly equal to the population of Kolkata. The index, published by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation, ranked 162 countries based on three factors that include...