-The Times of India CHENNAI: Poor incomes, mounting debts and family issues drove a good number of those in the lower socioeconomic bracket to suicide. Data put out by the National Crime Records Bureau ( NCRB) for 2014 said nearly 70% of the suicides were by people earning less than Rs one lakh per annum. This disturbing trend hasn't changed much. On July 18, in a suicide pact, a 35-year-old cab driver and...
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Why The Poor Are More likely To Be Undernourished -Nidhi Kaicker, Vani S. Kulkarni & Raghav Gaiha
-Outlook The poor are increasingly displaying food preferences for better tasting, flavoured and packaged foods but with low nutritional content. Renewed media hype about counting the number of poor was sparked by the recent release of the Socio-Economic Caste Census. While many analysts found the prevalence of poverty alarmingly high, others debunked the SECC report for its muddled and incoherent view of deprivation. An important contribution of this report, however, is the...
More »Two-thirds of rural households still use firewood for cooking, says NSSO -Rukmini S
-The Hindu In urban areas, however, a similar proportion use LPG Over two-thirds of households in rural India still rely on firewood for cooking, new data from the National Sample Survey (NSS) Office show. In contrast, a similar proportion of households use liquefied petroleum gas for cooking in urban areas, but 14 per cent of urban households — including nearly half of the poorest 20 per cent — still rely on firewood. Data...
More »Grim picture -TK Rajalakshmi
-Frontline A survey conducted by the Women and Child Development Ministry and UNICEF in 28 States and Delhi presents a dismal picture of crucial maternal and child health indicators. ONE OF the success stories that successive governments at the Centre have regularly narrated is the improvement in maternal and child health indicators, including coverage of various facilities and services that directly or indirectly affect the health and well-being of these cohort...
More »Many degrees of hopelessness in India's villages -Harsh Mander
-Hindustan Times The picture of rural Indian life today that emerges from what is probably the world's largest study ever of household deprivation is sobering and sombre. It describes a massive hinterland still imprisoned in persisting endemic impoverishment, want, illiteracy and indeed hopelessness. It tells a story that every thinking and caring Indian must heed. Advocates of free markets, opposed to building a welfare state, have long argued that accelerated market-led economic...
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