A new study looking at cancer mortality in 2010 in India found a high 71 per cent (3,95,400) deaths in people between 30 and 69 years. Cancer accounted for 8 per cent of the 2·5 million total male deaths and 12 per cent of the 1·6 million total female deaths in the same age group. The high mortality rate during the middle age is very different from the developed countries,...

Even as the opposition took the government to task for tweaking consumption data to show that the number of poor in India has declined, as first highlighted on Monday by Mint columnist Himanshu, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia defended the methodology used for the calculation by the plan panel. Ahluwalia said the inclusion of money spent on the mid-day meal scheme in so-called private household expenditure was correct because...

The Supreme Court has handed down an extraordinary decision with some extraordinary arguments directing the central government to execute the “river interlinking project”. How could the Court which says “it can hardly take unto itself tasks of making of a policy decision or planning for the country on the need for acquisition and construction of river linking channels” then go on to actually take the very same policy decision and...

Protests marked the 10th anniversary of the introduction of genetically modified (GM) Bt cotton in the country. Angry farmers urged parliamentarians to hold a special session to discuss the issue and ban the technology. Charging a few seed companies, particularly Monsanto, with monopolising the seed industry and setting the agenda for the government, social activists urged policy-makers and farmers to reject the hype around Bt cotton and demanded a comprehensive review....

Methodology error, intentionally manipulated data of poor quality and perilous local level political partiality is making the life of poor miserable and proved time and again that ‘any initiative for the poor tends to be a poor initiative.’ The erroneous way of assessing multi-dimensional indicators for locating the poor without making any distinction between facilities self-created by someone against facilities created through government schemes is nothing but an attempt to hide...