-The Telegraph What is most worrying is that some of the top causes of these deaths are preventable infectious diseases A progress report does not always bring cheer. A Lancet study showed that death of children under five in India went down from 2.5 million in the year 2000 to 1.2 million in 2015. Unfortunately, this still meant that India had the highest child mortality rate in the world in 2015. The...

-The Hindu Number of caesareans was 17.2% for India during the period from Jan 2015 to Dec 2016 A new study based on the data from the National Family and Health Survey has shown that there is a significant increase in the rate of caesarean births in India. While the WHO recommends the rate of caesarean delivery to be 10-15%, the number was 17.2% for India during the period from Jan 2015 to...

-Frontline.in The 2018 Global Nutrition Report points to the link between income and malnutrition but falls short of examining critical factors such as enhanced public spending that determine the levels of hunger and nutrition. In 2017, fewer than one in five children, six to 24 months of age, in the world ate a minimally accepted diet. More than half of them in the same age group did not get the recommended number...

Passionate about the deepening of agrarian crisis, quite often journalists and media persons cite figures related to farm suicide (as provided by the National Crime Records Bureau) in order to draw the attention of the readers. They do so in the following ways: * Compare the absolute number of farm suicides (viz. suicide by cultivators + suicide by agricultural labourers) across regions/ states for a particular time point or time period...

-The Economic Times Minutes after taking oath on Monday as the new Madhya Pradesh chief minister, Kamal Nath sanctioned the waiver of farm loans in the state, as promised in the Congress election manifesto. Ostensibly, this is to relieve economic distress for farmers. But Nath himself was on record last week saying, “[Farmer distress] is why there are so many suicides.” Thus, the lightning waiver. Before anything else, let’s get the facts...