As the country celebrates 68th anniversary of her independence this year, recent data from the Census 2011 reveals that the population of homeless declined by 8.8% between 2001 and 2011 to reach 17.7 lakhs. This means that 4.5 lakh households (of average household size 3.9) still do not have any shelter to sleep safely. Although the percentage share of homeless in total population is miniscule (i.e. 0.15%), in absolute numbers...

-The Times of India Women And Children In State Are Malnourished To A Shameful Extent Lucknow: Malnutrition among women and children remains abysmally high in Uttar Pradesh despite several thousand crores spent annually on supplementary nutrition programmes. According to data kept by the Union ministry of women and child development, UP is among the worst performing states in the area of underweight and malnutrition among children between the age group of 0 to...

-Down to Earth Vasundhara Raje government adopts targeted approach for the scheme which can now be availed only by beneficiaries of food security programme The Rajasthan government has downsized its much-acclaimed free medicines and diagnostics scheme, the Mukhyamantri Nishulk Dava Yojna, launched in 2011. The Vasundhara Raje-led BJP government has adopted a "targeted approach" in implementing the scheme which was a "universal" one when launched by the previous Congress-led UPA regime. Public...

-PTI Ahmedabad: Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel on Sunday appealed to people to focus on building centralised kitchens to feed children instead of constructing temples. "If we can provide quality food to children under the mid-day meal scheme, we can drastically reduce the dropout ratio. I believe that it's better to build kitchens to feed children than building temples," Ms. Patel said, inaugurating a fully-automated kitchen, built by an NGO, The Akshaya...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The emphasis on use of digital technologies to bridge the "rural-urban gap" in the union budget is limited to high talk and minimal allocations. The need for a more comprehensive and peoples' participation-oriented rural action plan should have been the focus while setting sectoral allocations, but that is not to be in this mid-year budget. Vipul Mudgal (vipulmudgal@gmail.com) heads the Inclusive Media for Change project at the Centre...