-Hindustan Times India is on course to be the world’s most populous nation by 2022, surpassing China sooner than previously estimated, according to the UN’s 2015 Revised World Population Prospect report. The estimates forecast a remarkable quickening of India’s population growth between 2015 and 2050, while China’s is projected to remain flat and then start declining. “Within seven years, the population of India is expected to surpass that of China,” said the new...

-Hindustan Times A nutrition plan within the National Food Security Act meant for pregnant women and lactating mothers, a vulnerable group that skews India’s hunger indices, looks quietly buried. It still runs as a trial in 52 districts, two years after the landmark legislation was signed into law. The Centre hasn’t yet begun budgeting for it to expand the maternal health scheme to cover the whole country. While a parallel scheme under...

-The Times of India As crops fail, banks don't deliver and the government falters, Mandya's farmers find themselves at the mercy of unscrupulous moneylenders Chenne Gowda has a Rs. 4 lakh albatross around his neck. The 55-year-old sugarcane farmer from Chikka maralli village in Pan davapura taluk, Mandya district, took the loan from private moneylenders but has no idea how he'll repay. His crop, on two acres, is wilting in the field...

-Economic and Political Weekly A survey to identify who the poor are and how many are actually poor is necessary if programmes and benefits targeted at the needy are to reach them. The Socio Economic Caste Census, of which partial results have been published, was intended to do this. Yet, even a cursory look at the figures indicates that they call for a willing suspension of disbelief. N C Saxena (naresh.saxena@gmail.com) was...

-PTI New Delhi: Government on Friday said that air pollution is killing around 80 people in Delhi every day, according to an international study released recently. In a written reply in Rajya Sabha, environment minister Prakash Javadekar said that polluted air, particularly the respirable particulate matter is one of the several factors responsible for morbidity and premature deaths. "An international study released recently has claimed that foul air is killing up to 80...