The Planning Commission has set up a working group on elementary education and literacy. It will suggest measures for faster reduction in illiteracy with emphasis on gender, regional and social dimensions, and incentivise States to achieve cent per cent literacy during the XII Plan period. To be chaired by the Secretary, Department of Elementary Education and Literacy (Ministry of Human Resource Development), the group will suggest modifications to educational indicators, computation of...

Scheduled Castes and Tribes constitute half of the total "poor, deprived households", a pilot survey to identify the Below Poverty Line population has found. The survey found that SCs/STs were a mere 25% of the "non-poor households" who showed deprivation on some of the parameters -- ranging from housing to illiteracy to homelessness and destitution. The findings reiterate the long-held hypothesis that dalits are the most-underprivileged sections of population and the easiest...

It is estimated that India lost 1.8 million children under five in 2008. That is more than 200 child deaths every hour, each day, or more than three deaths every minute. Out of about 25 million babies born every year in India, one million die. Most who survive do not get to grow up and develop well. About 48 per cent are stunted (sub-normal height) and 43 per cent are...

The district that lost the highest number of people to militancy in Jammu and Kashmir appears to be making up for the loss through a baby boom. The provisional findings of the 2011 census show that Kupwara has the highest proportion of children aged up to six years among all the 627 districts in the country. The figures reveal that 22.5 per cent of Kupwara’s population is six years old or less...

India has added 181 million new people to its population over the last decade, according to the results of the 2011 census. India's population is now 1.21bn, which is bigger than the combined populations of the US, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Bangladesh. India launched the latest census exercise last year. Some 2.5 million officials visited households in about 7,000 towns and 600,000 villages. The population was classified according to gender, religion, education and occupation. The...