Promises action “to allay fears and insecurity Christians are experiencing” Chief Ministers will be asked to deal firmly with anti-Christian violence Promises to act on the Saldanha report on violence against minorities in Karnataka Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured a Christian delegation on Saturday that he was trying to evolve a consensus on granting Scheduled Caste status to Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims. He also said he would ask Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram...

This article documents and then examines the various benefits that, it is claimed, will flow from linking the Unique Identity number with the public distribution system and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It filters the unfounded claims, which arise from a poor understanding of how the PDS and NREGS function, from the genuine ones. On the latter, there are several demanding conditions that need to be met in order...

A good marker of a country’s progress is the environment in which its children grow up.  Prevalence of malnutrition, hunger, unhygienic surroundings and forced child labour cost a country dearly in terms of its real growth. The State of the World's Children 2011 report shows how little is being invested in the future citizens of our world. The theme of this year’s report is “Adolescence: An Age of Opportunity” and...

Adolescent girls face nutritional problems than boys of that age: report Having more than 243 million adolescents – the highest in the world – the key challenge that India faces is ensuring the nutritional, health and educational needs of this population, particularly girls. Over the past two decades, rapid economic growth – with real gross domestic product averaging 4.8 per cent between 1990 and 2009 – has lifted millions out of...

A shocking statistic has revealed that India is highly vulnerable to harassment towards women, with one woman molested every 26 minutes. The study by the South India Cell for Human Rights Education and Monitoring said one woman is raped every 34 minutes, while among 15 million girls born every year, one-fourth don’t get to celebrate their 15th birthday. Many villages, despite dearth of basic amenities, have ultrasound machines to check the...