The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council has recommended a Rs 4,250 crore programme to provide shelters and other amenities to homeless in Class 1 cities in the country. The council has suggested the National Programme for Shelters and Other Services for Urban Homeless to set up 6,800 permanent shelters for around 3 lakh homeless - 15% of the estimated population of people living in the open across urban India. The council, moving...

Over 55,000 women die due to child birth in India every year. Of the total children born in one year, a mind boggling 13 lakh die before they reach their first birthdays, most of them within a few weeks of entering this world. Another indicator that the world watches is how many children cannot survive beyond five years of age. In India every year, over 16 lakh under-5 years children...

Agriculture sector undergoes a historic change as livestock surpasses the economy of food grain Policy makers in India are finally acknowledging a structural shift in the agriculture sector they have been noticing for a decade. Economic contribution of livestock is today more than that of food grain crops. Traditionally, of the three components of the sector—crops, livestock and fisheries—crops drove the growth, and food grains are a major part of it....

-The Economist   Opposition to the world’s biggest biometric identity scheme is growing FOR a country that fails to meet its most basic challenges—feeding the hungry, piping clean water, fixing roads—it seems incredible that India is rapidly building the world’s biggest, most advanced, biometric database of personal identities. Launched in 2010, under a genial ex-tycoon, Nandan Nilekani, the “unique identity” (UID) scheme is supposed to roll out trustworthy, unduplicated identity numbers based on...

Muslims, SCs, STs reflect better social indices, closer to national averages Early in the morning, Mohammad Nadeem, a 25-year-old ‘pakka adati’, big wholesaler, at one of Muzaffarnagar’s fruit and vegetable mandis, briskly sets about selling carrots and oranges. As he expertly sifts through sacks of fresh produce, it’s difficult to picture him hawking peanuts by the roadside. But for five years in this bustling western Uttar Pradesh mandi, Nadeem’s store...