-Newsclick.in Data confirms an acute demand crisis in rural India and beyond. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s latest statement on millennials contributing to the auto industry slowdown by shifting their preferences—choosing Ola or Uber ride-booking services instead of buying cars—is feeding many a meme on social media. Even before her statement, sections of industry and the banking sector had been pushing this argument. Not just private banking giants, such as Uday Kotak, but even...

-The Hindu In his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi touched upon the need to control 'population explosion' in India. However, the growth rate of the country's population has been falling since 1971. The Total Fertility Rate (the average number of children borne by a woman in her lifetime) has also been falling across most States. India's population growth rate peaked between 1961 and 1971 and has been falling since. The...

-TheWire.in Instead, we should focus on why population control efforts have mostly translated to controlling women's, and not men's, fertility. In his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made it clear that the government considers population explosion to be in the way of India’s development. This isn’t the first time in the history of independent India when a government has tried to control the population. A similar fear led to the...

-The Hindu Officials say CMs of all States asked to take appropriate action under the law against quacks “At present, 57.3% of personnel currently practising allopathic medicine do not have a medical qualification,” states the Union Health Ministry’s data, adding that this puts at risk rural patients who suffer because of an urban to rural doctor density ratio of 3.8:1, and India’s poor doctor-population ratio of 1:1456 as compared with the World...

-The Times of India Manisha Verma, principal secretary, tribal development department, Maharashtra talks to Sugandha Indulkar about The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 and related issues, with today being World Tribal Day. * What’s the precise positioning of the tribal welfare departments at the Centre and states on FRA? This is a seminal legislation. The preamble to the Act itself states that it aims...