Women speak out fears of resisting deep-seated taboos associated with menstruation, viewed even today as polluting in much of India The status of women in India, despite all the brave talk, remains as precarious as ever. This is, after all, a culture which not just condones, but actively encourages the termination of foetuses determined to be female. Other crimes of violence against women are routine. Can things ever change? We took...

Union health ministry has decided to address the contentious issue of sexual health of adolescents head on. With one in every five Indians is in the age bracket of 10-19 years, the Union health ministry has conceived an "Adolescent Reproductive and Sexual Health (ARSH)" programme, where unique "health clinics" will dish out "adolescent-friendly services." States have started training doctors and nurses who will man these adolescent clinics to deal with uncomfortable problems...

China's population grew to 1.34 billion by 2010, according to census data, which showed an ageing and more urban population that experts say is likely to spur calls for the "one-child" policy to be relaxed. The census released on Thursday showed the population in China, the world's second biggest economy, grew by 5.84 percent from the 1.27 billion in the last census in 2000 and to a level that was smaller...

The first results of Census 2011 put India's population at 1,210 million, indicating a demographic transition. CENSUS 2011 is the 15th one undertaken in India since 1872 and the seventh after the country attained Independence. While there have been stray historical references to population counts of one kind or another in earlier periods over much smaller territories within the territory that constitutes present-day India, the consensus view is that the...

Late last month we received the exciting news that India now has a population of 1.21 billion. This figure generated less discussion than I expected. Maybe it would have been more mind-boggling a few months ago, before all the scams and scandals inured us to the large number of zeros that a billion signifies. Or maybe we were distracted by the other bad news in the census results — the...