-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Two government agencies - the census office and the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) - have come up with two completely different estimates of India's slum population, leaving both policy makers and the aam aadmi puzzled. The difference is so big that it can't be papered over by any technical jugglery. It has again raised suspicions of India's statistical system floundering, especially when it comes...

-The Hindu     Camp after camp has been forced to disappear in Muzaffarnagar by the official authorities. The people displaced by the communal riots are now in small shanty settlements, 10 tents here, another 10 tents half a kilometre down the road On December 26, 2013, a large group of visitors entered the Loi relief camp in Muzaffarnagar district, Uttar Pradesh. Loi camp - a festering sea of displaced and despairing humanity, with...

-The Hindu The Aam Aadmi Party's proposal of 666 litres of free water a day raises the alarming prospect of further disadvantaging the already deprived sections of Delhi who get no piped water at all The Twelfth Five Year Plan has proposed a paradigm shift in water management in India. One of our key proposals relates to urban water. In many ways, it could be said that the crisis of water and...

-The Times of India Gujarat's much-touted Chiranjeevi Yojana, launched in 2006 to reduce maternal and infant mortality rates in BPL households, has not had any significant impact, says a new study by Duke University. The programme, which subsidizes the cost of delivery at designated private sector hospitals, has not led to increased probability of institutional child-delivery. Also, analyses of household expenditure of women who used the subsidized delivery scheme in private hospitals...

The newly released disability data from Census 2011 shows that in a country of 2.68 crore disabled, nearly 69.5 percent stay in rural areas. Back in 2001, about 75 percent of the country's disabled resided in rural areas. The population of rural disabled persons has increased from about 1.64 crore in 2001 to 1.86 crore in 2011 i.e. by 13.7 percent. However, the population of urban disabled persons has increased...