-PTI NEW DELHI: Grappling with a "serious" hunger problem, India has been ranked 100th among 119 developing countries on the Global Hunger Index (GHI), behind North Korea, Bangladesh and even the besieged Iraq, but ahead of Pakistan, according to a report. India was ranked 97th last year. The country's hunger problem is driven by high child malnutrition, and underlines the need for stronger commitment to the social sector, the International Food Policy...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: India ranks the highest among the world's most disaster-prone countries for displacement of residents, with 23 lakh, on average, uprooted due to calamities such as floods, cyclones and earthquakes. A UN study, to be released on the International Day for Disaster Reduction on Friday, forecast a continued rise in homelessness. China, with annual average displacement of 13 lakh, ranks second. The estimation of displaced people in India may...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court's ruling that sex between a man and his wife under 18 years of age would be rape has triggered a fresh debate on how the government and courts will deal with social realities like consensual sex between adolescents. Gender rights activists welcomed the judgment saying it may reduce instances of child marriages, but said the decision has come as a blow to individual's...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: In another five years, the number of obese children in the world will outnumber the malnourished ones. A report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Imperial College London, published in medical journal 'The Lancet', stated on Wednesday that obesity rates among the world's children and adolescents increased from less than 1% in 1975 to nearly 6% in girls and nearly 8% in boys in 2016. India, however,...

-The Times of India Many members of the Niti Aayog's newly constituted Working Group on Nutrition have significant conflicts of interests. Several are representatives of international agencies, which have close ties to multinational food companies including Nestle, Hindustan Unilever, Coca Cola, Monsanto, Mars and Ajinomoto, and which have been pushing packaged therapeutic food to address malnutrition. The government has repeatedly clarified that packaged energy dense food is against India's policy on...