The India Country Report 2015 on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) comes at a time when the Union Budget 2015-16 allegedly cut expenditure on several social sector schemes and programmes. This year's MDG country report says that India will fail to achieve two important targets pertaining to reducing hunger and maternal mortality by 2015, among others. Released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), the report says that India is...

-Khabar South Asia Madhusudankati Sulabh Safe Drinking Water Project (SSDWP) uses modern filtration technology to create affordable potable water for residents. Madhusudankati: Access to affordable potable water has long been a dream for Manu Ghosh, a native of eastern India's arsenic belt. Groundwater contamination there has poisoned and killed people for years. "Groundwater is largely unsafe here and branded packaged drinking water is quite expensive for us," Ghosh told Khabar South Asia. She...

-Free Press Journal Seasonal agriculture is the mainstay of food as well as livelihood around here, so the local communities, predominantly Dalits and tribals rely heavily on their entitlements under the Public Distribution System (PDS), a government-sponsored food security net for the poor and marginalised populations, writes Dilnaz Boga. Pandarigota is a quaint village with a population of 305, tucked away in the dense forests of Korchi block in eastern Maharashtra's Gadchiroli...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Under watch across the world over the alarming quality of air in its national capital, are Indian authorities trying to shoot the messenger? The Delhi Pollution Control Committee, which runs a real-time air pollution monitoring system, has been rapped for releasing "raw" or "unedited" air quality data on its website. In a meeting last week, the Union environment ministry has decided that DPCC's data will be...

-The Hindu Delhi, Kerala and Tamil Nadu are India's best-ranked States in terms of gender-related education indicators, new data from the Ministry of Human Resource Development and UNICEF, shows. Using district-level indicators of girls' education, health and social disadvantages, the government aims to identify the most backward pockets of the country, requiring the most attention. "Earlier, we used to look at the gender gap in indicators, and this is narrowing. However this,...