It is worrying that the Tendulkar method, chosen by the Planning Commission to calculate the poverty line in its latest figures, underestimates the levels of poverty while overestimating poverty reduction. The figures show that 29.8% or 360 million Indians were poor in 2009-10 as compared to 37.2% or 400 million in 2004-05. A poor person has been defined as one who spends R28 per day in urban areas and R22.5...

By selectively borrowing habits from the West, the urban Indian has worsened his chances with cancer. Doctors say that while the city-bred Indian has willingly adopted a western diet, lapping up high-fat foods and shunning high-fibre content, he or she hasn't picked up the healthy western attitude of detecting and treating cancer early.  The end-result, as the India's Million Death Study (MDS) reported on Thursday shows, is that urban Indians are...

The change is accompanied by a significant geographical shift from the south and north-east to states in other parts of India such as Maharashtra, Bihar, Orissa and Rajasthan Marking a dramatic shift in the demographic profile of people with AIDS, migrant workers and their wives have emerged as a high-risk group (HRG) for contracting the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), with an infection rate surpassing that of injecting drug users, commercial sex...

It is a myth that cancer is prevalent only in urban areas More than 5,56,000 cancer deaths occurred in India in 2010 and 71.1 per cent of those who died were aged between 30 and 69 years, says a report on cancer mortality in India, published in the March 28 issue of The Lancet. While men in the age group of 30-69 years are more likely to die of oral cancers followed...

-The Telegraph   The risk of dying from cancer is nearly the same in rural and urban areas and the highest among the least educated, according to a study described as the first to provide nationally representative estimates of cancer deaths across India. The study, by researchers at the University of Toronto, Canada, and collaborating Indian institutions, challenges a common perception that cancer in India is primarily a disease of urban and educated...