-PTI Southern states continue to lead the pack on the crucial measure, where the country is ranked 130th globally, but are staring at a different trouble, the report notes. Mumbai: Uttar Pradesh and Bihar continue to languish on the human development index (HDI) front, while others, including Haryana and Himachal, have shown an improvement in the past 27 years, says a report. The industrially progressive Gujarat and Maharashtra have slipped in the HDI...

-The Hindu Better education is not leading to better job opportunities, marriage prospects or freedom of movement Abigail Adams, wife of the second President of the U.S. and mother of the sixth President, wrote to her husband, “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion.” As last year’s #MeToo movement and Sabarimala protests showed, perhaps Indian women are echoing her and are...

-The Hindu New Delhi: Anganwadi services have a poor reach among key beneficiaries – the poorest of the poor and uneducated mothers – according to a paper published in a WHO bulletin recently. The government’s Integrated Child development Scheme (ICDS) provides a package of six services at anganwadi or child-care centres to young children and pregnant women and lactating mothers. These services include supplementary nutrition, referral services, immunisation, health check-up, pre-school non-formal...

-Newsclick.in It remains to be seen how many political parties pledge to protect the urban poor from eviction and homelessness and work for inclusive ‘Smart Cities’. Over 30 civil society groups consisting of slum dwellers, civil society organisations, women groups, other groups working amongst the urban poor, disabled women groups, street vendors, housing rights activists and so on assembled in Delhi on February 28 to set a new discourse for 2019. This...

-The Indian Express The Indian Express has learnt that two inquiry reports into the issue, prepared by Women and Child development Department, were allegedly riddled with falsities, prompting Sisodia to lash out at the department’s secretary over what he termed a “fraud”. New Delhi: Anganwadi registers were allegedly “fudged”, pages “pulled out” and pencil records “erased” and overwritten to falsely establish that three sisters aged 8, 4 and 2, who died...