-The Hindu Business Line   Claims that the economic gap in India is being bridged are not borne out by NSS data Recent accounts of poverty reduction - especially during 2004-11- triggered by the release of the 68th round of the NSS data, have been euphoric. Growth acceleration not just resulted in more rapid poverty reduction over this period than during 1993-2004 but it was also more inclusive as the most disadvantaged groups,...

-IPS News   ATTAPPADI, India, May 4 2014 (IPS) - The death of a 10-day-old girl last November in the Attappadi tribal belt of Kerala, one of India's best performing states in terms of human development indices, shows how the country's battle against child mortality is far from won. The infant's mother, Saraswathy, a 20-year-old from the Kurumba tribe, was admitted to a government hospital, and delivered the next day. At 1.8 kg,...

-The Indian Express     Mumbai: It's been eight months since the state government launched ‘Manodhairya Yojana', a scheme to provide monetary relief and rehabilitation for rape and acid attack victims, including women and children. But with little advocacy, lack of counsellors in civic-run hospitals, poor post-trauma support as mandated by the scheme, and most importantly, policy apathy, ‘Manodhairya' risks being a laudable scheme just on paper. AAMIR KHAN and TABASSUM BARNAGARWALA speak...

-The Hindustan Times   The Aadhaar scheme, touted as ‘gamechanger' by the UPA government, ended up hurting the Congress in the Lok Sabha polls, said outgoing Union food and consumer affairs minister KV Thomas. "The Aadhaar initiative, and the objective of linking welfare schemes with it, didn't find favour with the people. The decision was not appreciated by voters," Thomas told HT on the eve of the Congress Working Committee meeting on Monday,...

-The Times of India   NEW DELHI: The World Health Organisation's (WHO) work of setting up norms and standards for production of medicines seems to be flawed by a fundamental conflict of interest. At the heart of its standard setting work is an entity the International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) in which majority of the WHO member countries have no voting rights and which is dominated by pharmaceutical industry groups. This glaring...