-TheHansIndia.com Mulai Payeng, a 57 year old tribal farmer from the Kathino bari village in the Jorhat district in upper Assam expresses surprise when asked if the lack of irrigation facilities or the changes in the rainfall pattern is affecting his cultivation. Payeng belongs to the Mishing community. According to state government data, presently over fifty percent of the irrigation projects are non functional in the state, and besides this environmentalists have pointed...

-Tehelka Why is India struggling to feed its girls and women, who are in desperate need of nutrition, asks Ruhi Kandhari One out of three women or adolescent girls who come through that door are anaemic," says Dr Savita Agarwal, who runs a charitable clinic at a slum in north Delhi, pointing at the door of her clinic. "They cannot afford to eat meat, eggs, fruits and vegetables that provide iron." Fifty percent...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In a move to involve private players more to clean Ganga, the govt is keen to allow corporates to spend their CSR fund without any interference of municipal bodies in 118 cities and towns along the river. Corporates would be allowed to undertake projects that contribute to this mission after getting easy approval from the municipal bodies. "The issue was discussed at a meeting chaired...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government's practice of letting the Prime Minister's Office take all the major decisions on behalf of virtually every ministry resulted in the women and child development ministry receiving flak from the Supreme Court this week. On Wednesday, the court rapped the ministry for allowing the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights to remain vacant for the past three months since the tenures of...

-The Financial Express With 66% of its population under the age of 35, India is home to the largest cohort of young people in the world-825 million. The median age of the country is just 27 years, much below 37 in the US and 46 in Japan. Numbers like these suggest that India has a competitive advantage over China and other Asian countries-a demographic dividend. But favourable demographics do not imply that...