The number of hungry people in the world dropped about 10 percent for the first time in 15 years to below 1 billion but the figure is still "unacceptable," the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a report. According to a report titled "The State of Food Insecurity in the World," which will be jointly published by FAO and World Food Program (WFP) in October, about 925 million people...

Inefficiency, the global financial meltdown and rising food prices have conspired to reverse progress made on poverty and hunger Head out of Delhi, across the fetid Yamuna river, with the tourist sites behind you and the northern Indian plains in front of you. Go past the new, luxury flats built for the Commonwealth Games, turn right and follow the lines of the new metro and then plunge left, avoiding the chaotic...

Once, during a tour of his constituency in Tamil Nadu, Member of Parliament and former Panchayati Raj minister Mani Shankar Aiyar came across an eight-year-old boy. A chance meeting that he says threw light on why India stagnates at the 134th position in the United Nations Human Development Index. The boy, Aiyar said during a brief pause in his United Nations Millennium lecture at the British Council on Sunday, had got...

“This Employment Guarantee Act is the most significant legislation of our times in many ways. For the first time, rural communities have been given not just a development programme but a regime of rights…The NREGA gives employment, gives income, gives a livelihood, and it gives a chance to live a life of self-respect and dignity.” — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the launch of NREGS The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme...

KEY TRENDS   • Maternal Mortality Ratio for India was 370 in 2000, 286 in 2005, 210 in 2010, 158 in 2015 and 145 in 2017. Therefore, the MMRatio for the country decreased by almost 61 percent between 2000 and 2017 *14    • As per the NSS 71st round, among rural females aged 5-29 years, the main reasons for dropping out/ discontinuance were: engagement in domestic activities, not interested in education, financial constraints and marriage. Among rural males aged...