-The Telegraph With the Assembly elections approaching, water has again become a promise. Is it indeed possible to ensure every household in the state gets clean piped water supply within the next four years? Nothing can be more shameful if a government that has been in power for 18 years cannot even provide basics like clean drinking water.” So said Union home minister Amit Shah in 2018, when he was in Odisha...

Multidimensional poverty is about non-monetary poverty and is strongly associated with the challenges of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although previously defined only in monetary terms, poverty is now understood to include the lived reality of people’s experiences and the multiple deprivations they face. India’s multidimensional headcount ratio (H) i.e. the proportion or incidence of people (within a given population) who experience multiple deprivations has reduced from 55.1 percent to...

-The Hindu What we have done so far, and what all remains to be done The global pandemic is marching on. As I had said at the JRD Tata Oration, hosted by the Population Foundation of India on its 50th anniversary, of the lessons I have learned over the last nine or 10 months, the most important one is the significance of investing in public health and primary healthcare. Countries that invested...

  Among other things, one of the reasons (given by some economists) behind low labour force participation rate (LFPR) of women vis-à-vis men in the country is that more young girls are educating themselves, causing an improvement in the secondary and tertiary enrolment rates. It means that more Indian women are staying out of the labour force in order to continue their education – secondary education and / or college &...

-The Indian Express How unpaid labour by women subsidises the Indian economy The latest time-use survey on women’s and men’s work has just been released by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), albeit 20 years after the first time-use survey was conducted. We must congratulate the NSSO for successfully completing this survey as this was much needed. Some startling findings have emerged regarding the work done by men and women — the...