-The Indian Express If you are old and single, you are most likely to be a woman living in a rural area. That's the finding from the recently released Census 2011 data on households with people aged 60 years and above. A whopping 72.83 per cent of old people who live alone are women. That's 36.2 lakh old women who live on their own as opposed to 13.5 lakh old men. Of...

-The Indian Express The four-month monsoon season ended last week leaving a deficit of 12 per cent. The authorities have called it a below-normal monsoon and the worst in the past five years, but skim the data and the picture seems even more sobering. Nearly one-third of the 36 met divisions in the country have received deficient rainfall, with Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh - which are major agriculture regions -...

-The Hindu India needs a meaningful electricity service, not merely a wire connection to every household No one would believe that simply owning a smart phone would be enough to go online and get connected - one would still need a data connection for that to happen. Similarly, it is time that we added a similar level of service to define electrification, a focus area for the government. A decade ago, a village...

-Accountability Initiative/ RaghuBytes Unless you have a blocked nose, I strongly suggest that you do not drive from Bhubaneshwar the capital of Orissa, to Kandamahal, a remote tribal district, particularly in the evenings. At twilight, when you begin to wind into the interior, you are greeted with the sight of the behinds of the entire population squatting on the roadside, faces turned away and shitting. We quickly wound up the windows...

-The Hindu "Antenatal care is very important for health workers to detect mothers with obesity or diabetes... both specific risks during pregnancy," says Dr. Flavia Bustreo, Assistant Director General at WHO. In 2013, globally, preterm birth complications were responsible for 15 per cent (0.96 million) of deaths in children under five years of age. It is a leading cause of death in neonates (0-27 days after birth). According to WHO, about 15...