-The Hindustan Times   The World Bank and International Monetary Fund just concluded their annual meetings in Washington. At an event on nutrition in South Asia, the evidence presented was clear and astonishing. On the one hand, South Asia has experienced robust economic growth averaging 6% a year over the past 20 years. On the other hand, the region continues to have unacceptably high rates of malnutrition with Bangladesh and India having...

-The Business Standard   Young women in India are much better off than their mothers, but they fare much worse than their counterparts in many developing countries when it comes to the physical survival rate of women and participation in labour force, says a report by the World Bank. The World Development Report titled ‘Gender Equality and Development’ looks at gender inequality as not just a moral but also an economic issue. The report...

India has markedly improved the access of girls to education, besides bringing down fertility and infant mortality rates, but the World Development Report 2012 on ‘Gender and Development’ issued warnings on other fronts—women’s labour participation rates remain stagnant and domestic violence is alarmingly high. The report, launched on Thursday at the World Bank, also highlighted high rates of domestic abuse and their relationship to reproductive health apart from high maternal mortality...

In a bid to implement better the 'Right to free and compulsory Education' Act (Right to Education - RTE) in the state, the education department is thinking up new ideas. The primary education department is mulling providing bicycles to those students who have to travel more than 3 kilometres to get to their schools. This provision of bicycles, however, is subject to the finance department's approval. Sources in the state education department...

Eight journalists from all over India have been selected for the 2011 Inclusive Media Fellowships of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). One of the fellowships is supported by the ASER Centre of the Education NGO, Pratham, a pioneer in quality of education in Indian schools. The Inclusive Media Project also conducts media research and runs a unique resource centre, im4change.org, on India’s rural crises. The recipients of the...