-PTI/ United Nations No country has achieved the SDGs and even top Sweden scores "red" on several goals India has ranked a low 110 out of 149 nations assessed on where they stand with regard to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, according to a new index which is topped by Sweden and shows all countries face major challenges in achieving these ambitious goals. The Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Bertelsmann Stiftung...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The gender gap in healthcare spending is increasing in India, and even educated and wealthy households spend less on women's health than on men's, scientists have reported. Demographers and other experts have documented for over a century how Indians discriminate against girls in healthcare and general well-being. New research now suggests that this gender disparity is amplified in adults and has increased over time. An analysis from two nationwide...

-The Hindu More than half of them don’t have any medical qualification, and in rural areas, just 18.8 per cent of allopathic doctors are qualified. Almost one-third (31 per cent) of those who claimed to be allopathic doctors in 2001 were educated only up to the secondary school level and 57 per cent did not have any medical qualification, a recent WHO report found, ringing the alarm bells on India’s healthcare workforce. The...

-The Hindu The Maharashtra government’s decision to promulgate an ordinance this week to exempt farmers from having to mandatorily sell their fruit and vegetable crop at mandis governed by a 1963 law on marketing farm produce, is a bold and laudable step. That Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has stood his ground against the powerful lobby of middlemen, who shut shop in protest, is even more commendable. The problem with the present...

-TheWire.in The shift from the MDGs to sustainable development goals is also a shift from tracking aggregates to tracking more disaggregated indicators, and India urgently needs a strategy to overcome data limitations. India may be one of the very few countries where key central ministries disagree on whether crucial Millennium Development Goals (MDG) will be achieved or not. MDG 5, whose target was reduction of maternal mortality ratio (MMR) by three quarters...