-Down to Earth   This defies logic. Despite rapid economic growth, India has often been placed below sub-Saharan African countries that have very high number of malnourished children. But the government has no data to clarify its position. In the first week of September, Parliament’s Committee on Estimates criticised the government, saying: “The committee is surprised to note that in the modern era of Information and Technology, there is no recent official...

-The Indian Express Thiruvananthapuram: Underage marriage among Muslims has ignited a debate in Kerala, with the community's most influential organisation vowing to get legitimacy for the practice while political parties and women's groups have said it would be a setback when Muslim girls have been making strides in education. It was triggered by a government effort to ratify underage marriages that have already taken place, because many such couples were finding...

-The Hindu When a death sentence is given to satisfy the "collective conscience of the community," it raises troubling questions about the fairness of the trial The verdict of death for the bestial gang rape in Delhi last December is based on Supreme Court judgments, which stipulate that capital punishment will be imposed in "the rarest of rare" cases, where the community's "collective conscience is so shocked that it will expect the...

-Down to Earth Infant deaths in West Bengal’s only super specialty hospital underscrore an urgent need to improve healthcare facilities in rural areas SUPER SPECIALTY B C Roy Children’s Hospital in Kolkata looks like a refugee camp. A sit-out for families inside the complex is roofed with plastic in bright shades of blue, red and green. The sheets protect families from the regular monsoon downpour. The not-so-lucky ones huddle under buildings when...

-IPS News UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2013 (IPS) - Reducing the proportion of undernourished people by half until 2015 was one of the Millennium Development Goals that the international community set in 2000. It will not be reached: At least 870 million people worldwide - and one child in five - still go hungry; this in a world where we already produce enough food today to feed nine billion people in...