-The Hindu Ignoring hunger and malnutrition will have significant costs to any country's development. Nutrition improvement has both intrinsic and instrumental value One of the disappointments in the post-reform period in India has been the slow progress in the reduction of malnutrition, especially with reference to the underweight among children. In fact, the rate of change in the percentage of underweight children has been negligible in the period 1998-99 to 2005-06; the...

-The Hindu A systemic reform of the health sector in order to meet the key objectives of equity, efficiency and quality is long overdue. In this, the Central and State governments need to make interventions intelligently, decisively and strategically so that the poor reap the benefits How does Prime Minister Narendra Modi's focus on population, health and subjects like public hygiene, the facilitation of toilets and ensuring preventive health through yoga fit...

-The Hindu Pune: An impotent anxiety grips Indira Gaikwad as she hobbles on her crutches in her matchbox house in the mean tenements in the city's Rasta Peth area. A former State-level disabled sports champion, Indira, at 43, is fast approaching the deadline (of 45 years) for differently abled sportspersons aspiring to a government job. Crushed by the financial burdens of looking after her 75-year-old ailing mother, the post-dated promises of goodwill...

-Outlook Bhubaneshwar: 'Universal Identity Cards' would be issued to people with disabilities for which a survey would begin next month to ascertain the exact number of disabled people in the country, Union Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Thawar Chand Gehlot said today. "The census figure does not provide a clear and proper picture on the actual number of disabled persons. Our ministry has decided to conduct a country-wide survey to identify people...

-The Times of India Improvement in human development measures has slowed down in the past few years, according to the 2014 Human Development Report (HDR) released on 24 July in Tokyo. The human development index (HDI), a measure derived from life expectancy, education levels and incomes, barely grew from 0.700 in 2012 to 0.702 in 2013. Even that small improvement could be at risk of getting reversed given the bleak picture of...