-Livemint.com Development—healthcare, jobs, education—inevitably lowers the total fertility rate Give me a rupee for every time I have heard “demographic advantage" applied to India in the last several years, and I’d be sitting on a small fortune. Invariably, the mentions are tinged with pride, as if we’ve suddenly transformed into a commendably and overwhelmingly young nation. Truth is, we used to be even younger and are getting steadily older. But that’s a story...

-Newsclick.in A large number of vacant Anganwadi posts and non-operationalisation of approved centres are in 5 states alone and are directly impacting nutrition of children and women. In reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Zubin Irani said that 1.93 lakh posts were lying vacant in Anganwadis across the country at various levels. Out of these 1.29 lakh posts lying vacant in five states alone...

The pandemic's first wave had a devastating impact on the livelihoods of rural workers in Bihar (including the self-employed) last year, according to a survey based research, jointly done by economists from Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability at Monash University, Australia and the New Delhi-based Institute for Human Development. A recent press note issued by the authors of the study shows that almost 94.4 percent of the households participating...

-The Hindu Human trafficking is a crime in itself, but it is also the propeller of several other crimes Sita was 13 years old when she was trafficked. Her parents worked in a tea garden in Assam for meagre wages. She was trafficked to a placement agency in New Delhi, and bought for about ₹20,000 as a domestic worker by a couple. Sita was not paid a single rupee. Instead, she was...

-Down to Earth The disease has been on India’s radar since 2006; need to strengthen disease surveillance, train workforce and build robust laboratories    The death of an 11-year-old boy from Haryana at Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences due to Avian influenza — the first such fatality in the country — has stressed the need to respond to zoonotic diseases in a timely manner.  Experts have flagged the emergence and re-emergence of...