IN PATNI, a remote village in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh, sevenmonth- old Sandeep is playing in the mud. He finds a pumpkin seed in the dust and promptly puts it into his mouth. A tiny piece of cow dung, a pebble, a fallen leaf and finally the sole of a rubber slipper follow the pumpkin seed. For Sandeep and the children in the 300- odd families in the village,...

Nahrani, a 38-year-old in Lalitpur, a village 30km from Jhansi, has an all-too-familiar tale to tell: a recently deceased husband; the lack of a ration card which promises access to free or inexpensive food; and a village without water, power, schools or health centres. Not one child from the 50-odd families in this village goes to school. The menfolk are perennially drifting, looking for jobs. And no one has heard...

Nearly 65% of class V students in rural areas of Tamil Nadu can’t read even a class II textbook in their mother tongue, 45% don’t know subtraction and nearly 81% can’t read simple English sentences, the Annual Status of Education Report for 2009, compiled by Delhi-based NGO Pratham Foundation, has revealed. The findings of the survey, which had a sample size of 33,000 students in both private and government schools,...

The efforts to reduce child malnutrition in Chhattisgarh have hit a roadblock. The state has partially rolled back its policy of decentralized food provisioning in the Integrated Child Development Services (icds), the key programme for reducing malnutrition amongst pre-school children. The National Family Health Survey (nfhs) shows that 47 per cent of children in Chhattisgarh are underweight, putting it along with Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Meghalaya, among the top...

“She was thrown in the garbage dump outside the village for dogs that ate her. Her only fault — she was the fourth girl born in a poor family,” said Harshinder Kaur, paediatric doctor here, recalling the first time she witnessed discrimination against female infants in Punjab's rural side. “Over a decade ago, I couldn't save that infant and ever since I try to speak for the girls who never...