The virility of Muslim men vis-à-vis men from other religious communities have often been used as a political tool and to create a divisive agenda just before elections for getting votes from the majority of the Indian electorate who are Hindus. Instead of focusing on positive agendas like human development, employment generation, and poverty reduction, political campaigns just before the elections oftentimes reduce to mere communal propaganda (when a lot...

-The Hindu Total Fertility Rate has dropped to 2.0, indicating just replacement level. Births in institutional facilities, such as a hospital, improved by nearly eight percentage points but children who were either stunted or displayed signs of wasting only dropped by a maximum of three percentage points, shows a comparison of the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5) and NFHS-4. The complete results of the NFHS-5 were made public on Wednesday. The NFHS-4 was...

The increase in the total number of suicides committed in India during 2020 in comparison to the previous years has hit the headlines recently. While some media commentators have stated that the economic distress (caused by job loss, income loss, failure of business, and growing hunger, among other things) in 2020 could have led to more suicides being committed, others have said that home isolation and deteriorating mental health (associated...

-The Hindu But remote work, education, and healthcare still not equally available to all, says survey The story so far: Internet connectivity has shot up over the last year, with most new users attributing their new connections to the COVID-19 pandemic and shutdowns. However, a new nationwide survey found that remote work, education, and healthcare are still not equally available to all, even among those with digital access. How was the study designed? LIRNEasia,...

-The Hindu ‘It can’t be a business as usual approach’ As almost 26 crore children return to physical classes after 18 months of school closures, a business as usual approach will lead to a deepening of existing educational inequity, warned the National Coalition on the Education Emergency in a report released online on Tuesday. The NCEE cited data from the recent SCHOOL survey conducted in 15 States, which showed that 72% of elementary...