India’s decision-makers seem to find it difficult to see that there are children in the country. Being unable to see them, they are unable to perceive that they are hungry. In an age when we are able to use euphemisms like ‘under-nutrition’, this is perhaps not surprising. But it is disgraceful none the less.   This country has a large population of children. Fortyone per cent of its total numbers. The national...

Five women — all illegal miners — were buried alive when the roof of a 15ft deep coal pit collapsed on them near Chandrapura junction, 35km from Bokaro steel city, this noon. Two others were injured in the incident. That the mishap took place at Jhungurghuttu, which is a stone’s throw from a bustling railway station and barely 400 metres from the Chandrapura police station, is a clear indication that illegal...

What was our immediate response to further decline in the child sex ratio in India? Within days of the provisional 2011 Census results (March-April 2011), the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare reconstituted the Central Supervisory Board for the Pre-conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex selection) Act 1994 , which had not met for 3 years, and on November 30, 2011 the Ministry of Women and Child Development...

The use of tracker technology to zero in on the misuse of diagnostic techniques for sex determination has evoked mixed reactions. ONE of the least discussed issues in the context of the data thrown up by Census 2011 is the worrisome decline in the child sex ratio (CSR) and the not-too-perfect implementation of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, or PCPNDT Act. There is reason to...

If we get it right, the Food Security Bill carries the potential to alter the destinies of millions of India's poor and disadvantaged people, by assuring them as a legal right sufficient food to live with dignity. It was approved by the Cabinet after over two years of intense, sometimes fractious debate. Opinion in the Cabinet itself was reportedly divided around the proposed law. Gaping divisions persist, even as the...