-The Hindu Banks continue denying loans to low-income groups, insisting on sticking to a standard EMI route even though they are dealing with a complex social issue. In July 2012, Pradeep Kumar, a 36-year-old resident of Ladpur, a shanty town that sits on the north-western periphery of Delhi, applied for an employment loan at the magistrate’s office in Kanjawala district. Under the Pradhan Mantri Rozgar Yojana or PMRY — a funding policy...

The nation can be proud of running some of the world's largest programmes on social safety nets, says the latest report by World Bank. However, public spending on safety nets is still low in comparison to neighbouring countries Bangladesh and Pakistan. India tops the list of 136 countries for running the world's largest school feeding programme i.e. the Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDMS), and also the biggest public works programme i.e....

-Business Standard Successors to Millennium Development Goals should be achievable - and clearly written "By 2030 reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births." Everyone understands what this statement means. It is simple, comprehensible, concise, specific and quantifiable. In September 2015, the Milennium Development Goals, or MDGs, will be replaced by sustainable development goals, or SDGs. There are several parallel channels flowing into SDG formulation. One...

-Financial Express It focused on the effect of food prices on child nutrition in the Andhra Pradesh, one of India’s largest states, using data from the Young Lives project based at Oxford University An international study, conducted by researchers from the Public Health Foundation of India and the University of Oxford, with a team from Stanford University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says spikes in food prices during...

-PTI India has made “impressive” progress in providing primary education to its children but it is still struggling to achieve similar results in lower secondary education and has the largest number of out-of-school adolescents, a UN study said today. According to the study by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the Education for All Global Monitoring Report (EFR GMR), 124 million children and adolescents are now out of school...