The India Country Report 2015 on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) comes at a time when the Union Budget 2015-16 allegedly cut expenditure on several social sector schemes and programmes. This year's MDG country report says that India will fail to achieve two important targets pertaining to reducing hunger and maternal mortality by 2015, among others. Released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), the report says that India is...

-Economic and Political Weekly The National Sample Survey Office's survey of consumption expenditure is woefully inadequate for estimating the number of food-insecure households in India. Future surveys of NSSO need to collect information on the four pillars of food security: availability, access, nutritional adequacy/utilisation and stability. The Comprehensive Nutrition Survey in Maharashtra is an example of such a survey and appears to do a decent job of capturing the different elements...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The stage is all set for the resumption of iron ore mining in Goa after it was suspended in the state in 2012, to curb its indiscriminate and illegal mining. The Goa government's decision to renew the mining leases comes at a time when the economics of iron ore mining have changed and environmental concerns have gained more prominence. Pamela D'Mello (dmello.pamela@gmail.com) is a Goa-based journalist. The state government...

-The Hindu The challenge for the Modi government is to evaluate what works in development programming before making large spending decisions Governments in India have always launched big-ticket social development programmes with ambitious goals. The Narendra Modi government is no exception. Swachh Bharat Abhiyan aims to make India open defecation-free by 2019. The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana's financial inclusion programme set a target of opening 10 crore bank accounts by January...

The Publics and Policies Programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Goa Foundation and the Inclusive Media for Change is holding deliberations on “Permanent Fund Model for Ethical Mining: Land, Livelihoods and Intergenerational Equity” starting with a one-day conference on Feb 18 at India International Centre, New Delhi. The debate will continue on the im4change website. The idea is to discuss natural resources extraction...