If the malnourished in India formed a country, it would be the world's fifth largest — almost the size of Indonesia. According to Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 237.7 million Indians are currently undernourished (up from 224.6 million in 2008). And it is far worse if we use the minimal calorie intake norms accepted officially in India. By those counts (2200 rural/2100 urban), the number of Indians who cannot afford...

For the Government of India the first phase of the national solar mission has been a grand success. It not only managed to attract industry to invest in the generation of an energy considered costly, but also dramatically drove down the cost of producing this energy. In its celebration, little did the government realise that a major conglomerate had subverted rules to acquire a stake in the solar mission much...

One of the most comprehensive survey of learning achievement of class V students by NCERT shows that mean achievement of children of Uttar Pradesh in language and mathematics is highest in the country.  In environmental studies, UP students are a close second after Tamil Nadu (72.30%), with a mean score of 67.15%. In all respects - performance of girls, rural children and percentage of children getting more than 80% - UP...

On a wall on Station Road, among posters of Khoonkar Darinde and The Dirty Picture, Amitabh Bachchan looks out of a row of yellow-and-red posters and says, “Do boond har baar.” Here in Moradabad, the town in western Uttar Pradesh that till recently exported, besides its intricate brassware, strains of the deadly polio virus, the posters have been around for long. The writing on the wall was clear: this was...

India seems to have arrived at the threshold of polio eradication, but should it lower its guard? ON January 13, India achieved what had only two years ago seemed impossible in the immediate term. The country, which, given the epidemiological data in the new millennium, had come to be regarded by health experts around the world as one that would be the last to achieve freedom from polio (poliomyelitis), recorded no...