-The Indian Express Low crime rate numbers often don’t mean citizens are safer, and ‘rape capital’ and ‘crime capital’ could both be unfair assessments. In reports such as the one published by the National Crime Records Bureau last week, the quality of data is important, as is its placement in the right context. New Delhi: “It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts...

-Down to Earth The local administration in jharkhand is undermining the decentralised scheme, created to enhance livelihood, manage natural resources and improve basic infrastructure in rural areas Yojna Banao Abhiyan (YBA) was an outcome of two government programmes – Mission Antodaya (Intensive Participatory Planning Exercise (IPPE-II)) of the Ministry of Rural Development, and Gram Panchayat Development Planning of the Ministry of Panchayati Raj. It gave an opportunity to newly elected gram panchayats...

-Down to Earth Can we not go from being poor but unhealthy to being rich and healthy? Why should we inherit diseases that can be junked? In June 2017, British medical journal Lancet published a review of the prevalence of diabetes in 15 states of India. This study by a group of medical practitioners, funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), has worrying numbers. It finds that while some...

-The Times of India An NGO in Chhattisgarh is addressing the urgent deficit in nutrition by providing three meals a day to children under three along with daycare Sumita Dhruv's life revolves around rice — sowing, irrigating, and harvesting it. And yet very little of it reaches her two-year-old daughter Shristi. Like most children in the village of Baigahara, 50 km from Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh, Shristi was born underweight. Her eyes were...

-The Indian Express In jharkhand, ABBA was first made compulsory for PDS users in Ranchi district in August 2016. By June 2017, it was mandatory in about 80 per cent of the ration shops across the state. This meant, of course, that Aadhaar itself was compulsory — no Aadhaar, no food. Recent events in jharkhand shed some useful light on the damage done by compulsory biometric authentication in the Public Distribution...