-Hindustan Times It’s a paradoxical fact. Families become smaller as better nutrition, vaccination and healthcare ensure couples lose fewer children to malnutrition and infections, such as diarrhoea, pneumonia, sepsis and tuberculosis India’s most comprehensive report card on health released earlier this year shows India’s total fertility rate (TFR) has dropped from an average of 2.7 children per women in 2006 to 2.2 a decade later. Around two in three states that are...

-The Hindu Business Line Urban-rural wage gap highest in the North-East and northern States New Delhi: That rural employment, particularly in the informal sector, will fetch lower incomes, does not always hold true. In fact, hired workers in the informal sector in rural Gujarat earned twice as much as their counterparts in urban areas, a recent report of the National Sample Survey Organisation show. Hired workers in rural Gujarat’s informal sectors earned about...

-PTI The entire state of Assam has been declared as a disturbed area under the controversial AFSPA for three more months. The Centre has declared the entire Assam as a "disturbed" area under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act -- the AFSPA -- for three more months, citing various violent activities by insurgent groups ULFA, NDFB and others. In a gazette notification, the Home Ministry said the entire Assam, besides bordering areas...

-PTI West Bengal topped the list of states with the maximum number of human trafficking cases in 2016 followed by Rajasthan as the two accounted for around 61 per cent of such cases in the country. Of the 8,132 such cases registered across the country last year, 3,576 were from West Bengal and 1,422 from Rajasthan, government officials said. Rajasthan was followed by Gujarat where 548 such cases were reported last year. Maharashtra...

Political commentaries and analyses about the recently concluded assembly elections in 5 states is not yet over. However, amidst the big debates and discussions on development and changing social dynamics, insufficient attention is being paid to the nutritional data that has been released early this year. Among the 5 states where assembly polls were conducted recently, it is the state of Uttar Pradesh that has the highest proportion of adult...