-The Business Standard   Young women in India are much better off than their mothers, but they fare much worse than their counterparts in many developing countries when it comes to the physical survival rate of women and participation in labour force, says a report by the World Bank. The World Development Report titled ‘Gender Equality and Development’ looks at gender inequality as not just a moral but also an economic issue. The report...

-BankBazaar.com    Can you live on Rs 32 a day in Indian cities? This is what everyone is asking after the Planning Commission came up with this figure in its revised estimate of people living below the poverty line. How about living on Rs 26 a day in a village? Impossible, you say. That's the debate that has been going on in India for the past few days. There is certainly something missing with...

The nation wants to know how often teenagers pop the emergency contraceptive pill. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) will support and finance research projects that will look at the pill's use and overuse. Emergency Contraceptive Pills (ECPs) are used to prevent pregnancy following an unprotected act of sexual intercourse within 72 hours. The council has called for research proposals by December 31 on emergency contraception, especially those that will look...

There are fears that curative health care will be left to the private sector, while the public system will handle preventive and low-quality care. AN issue of The Lancet earlier this year highlighted some of the problems with public health in India, acknowledging that “it is in crisis”. The robust economic growth over the past 20 years has not translated into better health indices; indeed the decline of infant and child...

Is the Congress afraid of winning in Gujarat?  Nothing else explains why it lets Narendra Modi tom-tom development when it should have been the Congress banging the drums. The economic achievements of governments before Modi's read like an award citation, but too much secularism has since led the Congress astray. Instead of showcasing its past performance to regain Gujarat, it is obsessed with nailing Modi as a communalist-in-chief. Naturally, it is...