-Livemint.com A Mint analysis based on a wide range of district level Indicators of assets and amenities shows how Maharashtra's wealth is very unevenly spread If India is a land of contradictions, Maharashtra is its befitting exemplar. It is at once the country's cradle of wealth and its most poignant symbol of agrarian distress, where many millionaires are born, and many farmers commit suicides each year. Maharashtra is the wealthiest of all...

-The Indian Express Given Indicators that the government is considering moving to cash transfers and replacing the public distribution system (PDS), and the release of the Shanta Kumar Committee report, the debate on how best to provide food security has been rekindled. The report has a careful analysis of the sources of inefficiency at various stages of the procurement, storage and distribution system. Especially heartening is the admission that the Food...

The India Country Report 2015 on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) comes at a time when the Union Budget 2015-16 allegedly cut expenditure on several social sector schemes and programmes. This year's MDG country report says that India will fail to achieve two important targets pertaining to reducing hunger and maternal mortality by 2015, among others. Released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), the report says that India is...

-Free Press Journal Seasonal agriculture is the mainstay of food as well as livelihood around here, so the local communities, predominantly Dalits and tribals rely heavily on their entitlements under the Public Distribution System (PDS), a government-sponsored food security net for the poor and marginalised populations, writes Dilnaz Boga. Pandarigota is a quaint village with a population of 305, tucked away in the dense forests of Korchi block in eastern Maharashtra's Gadchiroli...

-The Hindu Delhi, Kerala and Tamil Nadu are India's best-ranked States in terms of gender-related education Indicators, new data from the Ministry of Human Resource Development and UNICEF, shows. Using district-level Indicators of girls' education, health and social disadvantages, the government aims to identify the most backward pockets of the country, requiring the most attention. "Earlier, we used to look at the gender gap in Indicators, and this is narrowing. However this,...