-The Indian Express Urban poor are highest in Manipur, Mizoram, Bihar, least in Goa and Delhi Unreleased data from the first urban Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC), tabulated as per criteria laid down by the erstwhile Planning Commission’s expert Hashim committee, shows that roughly 35 per cent of urban Indian households live below poverty line (BPL). This amounts to 22 million households of the total 63 million households surveyed in 4,041...

-IANS The Socio Economic and Caste Census of 2011 released on Friday reveals that over 1.8 lakh people from rural India are still engaged in manual scavenging despite the law prohibiting it. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act of 2013 prohibits any employment as manual scavengers and also promotes rehabilitation of these workers and their families. About 1,80,657 people are engaged in the practice, according to the census...

-Scroll.in The government is yet to frame policies on how to tackle severe acute malnutrition but non-profits have started experimenting with community-based models. Nurses call him "the boy who lived." Severely dehydrated, unconscious and weighing no more than two kilos, lighter than a healthy new born, one-year-old Subhash was brought to the Darbhanga Medical College in Bihar in February. Admitted to Malnutrition Intensive Care Unit, he was administered glucose, therapeutic milk...

-Hindustan Times A dominant feature of the first year of Narendra Modi's leadership is the quiet dismantling of India's imperfectly realised framework of welfare and rights, covertly, by stealth.   A declared pro-corporate agenda, such as the land acquisition ordinance, proved politically messy and costly. Therefore, the government resorted instead for an enfeebling of the welfare architecture of the country through a combination of fiscal withdrawals, ignoring even legally mandated obligations.   But this attracted...

-The Telegraph Guwahati: Tea Research Association and London-based Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau International have joined hands to develop a more ecological approach to tea production in order to reduce pesticide application. "The project will eventually lead to development of a toolbox of tried and tested practices to facilitate transition towards ecological production. The project envisages the development of a package of practices in relation to pest management, leading to the adoption of non-pesticide...