-The Hindu Education and exposure to a community health worker too score higher than age of marriage in accessing a facility, says study. poverty, education, and exposure to a community health worker are more important than age at marriage in determining whether a mother will be able to have a safe birth in a medical facility, according to a first-of-its-kind study on utilisation of institutional delivery in the country. The research comes at...

-IdeasforIndia.com The Centre has sought an additional Rs. 25,000 crore as funding for MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act). Based on simple calculations using official data, Ashwini Kulkarni contends that the actual fund requirement is in fact much higher. As the pandemic continues to adversely impact rural livelihoods, the government should allocate sufficient funds to MNREGA, in order to honour the work-on-demand guarantee. For over a month, national and local...

-TheWire.in Supriya RoyChowdhury's 'City of Shadows' is a compelling study of the lives of the poor in a rapidly globalising Bengaluru. The long caravans of workers leaving the cities for their villages during the national lockdown in 2020 made visible the large proportion of urban workers whose homes are in the villages. Combined with the farmers’ protests, they brought attention to the crisis in agriculture and the failure of agrarian livelihoods that...

-Down to Earth Blog The district set a record for creating 1,121 farm ponds in 30 days in September 2021, in line with the recently launched state climate mission In September 2021, Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvannamalai district set a record for creating 1,121 farm ponds in 30 days by leveraging the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). The initiative’s aim was to ensure adequate water for agricultural and domestic purposes throughout the...

After the release of the second phase data of the National Family Health Survey Fifth Round (NFHS-5), media commentators and experts have written that the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) for India has gone down just below the replacement-level fertility. The TFR for the entire nation was 2.2 in 2015-16, which decreased to 2.0 in 2019-21.   According to the United Nations, the replacement-level fertility is reached when the TFR of a...