-CaravanMagazine.in How political rhetoric has drowned out the economic realities of cattle-slaughter bans In mid August, news broke that more than 200 cows had starved to death in a shelter in Chhattisgarh owned by a Bharatiya Janata Party leader named Harish Verma. After the reports appeared, Verma protested that he had not received funds that the government had promised him for the shelter. But the irony could not have been starker. The BJP...

-Factchecker.in With a score of 38.6 out of 100, India’s performance on health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Index is the worst among BRICS nations. SDGs are universal targets including ending poverty, hunger and inequality, improving access to health and education among others for all countries by 2030. Created by the international research collaboration Global Burden of Disease, the SDG index calculates the performance of countries on 37 health-related targets of SDGs including under-five...

-IANS The study, published in the journal Lancet, found a 3.3 per cent annual decline in mortality rates of neonates (infants less than one month old) and 5.4 per cent for those in the age-group from one month to 59 months. Toronto: India has averted nearly one million deaths of children under five years of age since 2005, owing to a significant decrease in deaths from preventable diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhoea,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: An NGO has described an alleged fake encounter and accused Haryana police of a spurt in extra-judicial killings of Muslim youths in the Nuh and Faridabad districts. Citizens Against Hate has made the allegation in a recently published fact-finding report titled "Lynching Without End", which mainly looks at vigilante violence against minorities. The report cites 11 alleged fake encounters, involving 15 deaths, in Nuh alone, according to a statement...

-The Hindu There must be consensus among major political parties around vital issues like health Barely a month before the deaths of children in Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, allegedly due to the disruption of oxygen supply in the BRD Medical College, the U.P. Health Minister had addressed a consultation in Lucknow organised by the Observer Research Foundation. He admitted that U.P.’s health system was in the “ICU”, and said he was trying...