-TheWire.in Even in a state like Kerala, higher human development indices have not translated into equally solid gender outcomes. An interesting public policy question that has emerged over the last few years is why high human development indices are not translating into a better ‘gender status’ for Kerala. The Human Development Index (HDI) in Kerala (0.763) is the highest in India. The HDI is estimated as the geometric mean of three crucial aspects...

-The Hindu Business Line Scientists, farmer groups urge FSSAI Hyderabad: Several scientists and non-governmental organisations have asked the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to scrap its plans to make synthetic or chemical fortification of foods mandatory. “A major problem with the chemical fortification of foods, said the letter, is that nutrients don’t work in isolation but need each other for optimal absorption,” they said in a letter to the Food...

The pandemic's first wave had a devastating impact on the livelihoods of rural workers in Bihar (including the self-employed) last year, according to a survey based research, jointly done by economists from Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability at Monash University, Australia and the New Delhi-based Institute for Human Development. A recent press note issued by the authors of the study shows that almost 94.4 percent of the households participating...

-Scroll.in The pandemic has starkly revealed that India has failed to provide even basic health-care to the majority of its citizens. As the gravest health emergency to overwhelm the globe in a century continues to rage, the unbridled Covid-19 virus has laid bare the abject failure of India’s health system to secure even elementary levels of health-care for its people. Everything fell short disastrously, sometimes catastrophically: hospital beds, doctors, nurses, testing kits, medical...

-Down to Earth The disease has been on India’s radar since 2006; need to strengthen disease surveillance, train workforce and build robust laboratories    The death of an 11-year-old boy from Haryana at Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences due to Avian influenza — the first such fatality in the country — has stressed the need to respond to zoonotic diseases in a timely manner.  Experts have flagged the emergence and re-emergence of...