-The Hindu In all the States belonging to the Hindi heartland, less than one per cent of Hindus eat beef/buffalo meat. The number of Indians eating beef and buffalo meat went up from 7.51 crore in 1999-2000 to 8.35 crore in 2011-12 while the total household consumption of beef/buffalo meat went down from 4.44 crore kg per month to 3.67 crore kg in the same time period. These findings come from National Sample...

-Frontline.in In the latest Global Hunger Index, India is bracketed in the category of countries where hunger levels are “serious”. But the policy responses on hunger and malnutrition in the country have been inadequate and faulty. In the second week of October, a few media reports in India highlighted significant data pertaining to global hunger. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) had released its Global Hunger Index (GHI), rating 118...

-The Hindu Business Line Retail inflation worrisome on regional variations and transportation challenges New Delhi: Retail inflation may have eased to a 13-month low of 4.31 per cent in September, but surging prices continue to pinch the pockets of consumers in rural areas due to regional variations and transportation challenges. Though the consumer price index (CPI)-based inflation in rural areas fell to 4.96 per cent in September, against 5.87 per cent in August,...

-The Hindu We need to rethink social safety nets in India’s growing economy so that they can also focus on the accidents of life rather than solely on the accidents of birth. Sometimes the grand narratives of the Left and the Right do not seem to have any relationship with the lived experiences of ordinary Indians. For the past two decades, the Left has tried to expand social welfare programmes for the...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: India's middle class has seen new entrants. Pani puri vendors, dosa sellers, carpenters, welders, launderers, drivers and cable TV technicians have all pulled themselves out of the clutches of poverty and leapt into a section of the middle class — the bedrock of the economy. A paper titled 'The Rise of the New Middle Class and the Role of Offshoring of Services', co-authored by the head of...