-Economic and Political Weekly There are few areas where the statistics are as dismal as child health in India. This paper analyses four interrelated child health indicators in West Bengal - child malnourishment (measured by the rates of stunting and wasting), prenatal, infant, and child mortality rates. It also provides evidence on how these rates vary with the gender of the child, parental education, and the wealth status of households. West...

-Live Mint Our food procurement policies may be lopsided but there is no link between the food security law and free trade The upcoming World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Bali has attracted considerable attention in India because of its repercussions on our food policy. It is feared that the recently passed food security law will breach the negotiated limits on the aggregate measure of support (AMS) to farmers. AMS is...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In what appears to be another grim outcome of climate change, a study has found that forests in eastern Himalayas are gradually 'browning', with trees withering and foliage declining even during productive seasons. Similar changes were noted in tropical mountain forests across the world. Among the 47 protected areas across five biodiversity hotspots selected for the study, were Kangchendzonga national park in Sikkim and Namdapha national...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Nearly three of every four students shortlisted for the Indian Institutes of Technology this year come from two of the country's 29 school boards, an analysis of the results has shown. The results have confirmed a long-standing suspicion: distribution of students who made it to the elite tech schools is not uniform across the two national and 27 state boards. The analysis has shown that of the nearly...

-The Financial Express In an article published in this newspaper on September 4, 2013, Surjit Bhalla takes us to task for critiquing his earlier estimates of the cost of the Food Security Bill. Bhalla asserted that subsidy expenditures would more than triple and the FSB would cost the government R3,14,000 crore annually or 3% of GDP. We argued that Bhalla was barking up the wrong tree and that the main things...