-The Hindu Raipur: "The villagers gathered in one particular area for community dining, which is a ritual at this time of the year. It is part of the seed festival and there were no Maoists around. The forces opened fire without any provocation," said a local on condition of anonymity. Locals of Chhattisgarh's Edesmeta village - where at least nine persons were killed during a gun battle late on Friday purportedly between...

-The Hindu Khunti (Jharkhand): On the night of April 30, worshippers in the Raja Rani temple in Naurhi village in Adki block near Ranchi were singing, chanting and celebrating the new temple in their village when a group of CPI (Maoists) entered the temple and shot Dilip Acharya, the oldest of the three brothers who built the temple, dead as he lay asleep on the floor. The men then addressed...

-The Hindu Business Line It requires a change in mindset to reverse declining sex ratios. The state-wise child sex ratio (number of females per 1000 males in 0-6 years age group) in India during 2001-2011 declined except in Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Mizoram, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu (see table). Interestingly, these are the same states that had recorded a significant fall in child sex ratio during 1991-2001. Adverse child sex ratio can have...

-The Economic Times Arvind Panagariya, a professor of Indian economics at Columbia University, hits out at Nobel laureate and Harvard University professor Amartya Sen over his call to confront MPs with the "number of deaths" a delayed Food Security Bill can cause. The former chief economist at the Asian Development Bank counters Sen's argument that it is high social spending that has contributed to the economic growth of Asian economies such...

-Live Mint Some commentators have gone so far as to dismiss India's nutritional crisis as a ‘hoax' In a recent article, Columbia University economist Arvind Panagariya argued that India need not be ashamed of its malnutrition statistics as they are likely to be exaggerated. Panagariya's contention that international standards used to measure nutritional Attainments of Indian children are inappropriate, as they fail to account for "genetic differences" seem to have found favour...