-PTI India stopped short of co-sponsoring a first-of-its-kind United Nations resolution on eliminating "early marriage" due to a lack of greater legal clarity, the External Affairs Ministry said in a reply to an RTI application. The Resolution on 'Strengthening efforts to prevent and eliminate child, early and forced marriage: Challenges, achievements, best practices and implementation gaps', was adopted by consensus at the 24th Session of the Human Rights Council held between September...

-Outlook Ahmedabad: Gujarat has done a little worse than the national average when it comes to achieving decline in the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) and Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR), according to the Union Health Ministry. TFR, which signifies the number of children born per woman, fell from 2.8 in 2005 to 2.4 in 2011 in the state, as per the Sample Registration System (SRS) data. The national decline in TFR in this period...

In its latest report, the Statistical Year Book, India 2014 conveys that India is clearly on track to attain the MDG-2 (achieve universal primary education) and MDG-8 (develop a global partnership for development). However, the results are either mixed or poor in terms of India's performance in achieving the rest of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The chart below provides the MDG scenario from a bird's eye view.   The new...

-Newsclick.in With sixty percent children malnourished in the state, the implementation of the Integrated Child Development Services, the largest scheme to provide nutrition to children in the country, is nothing but a sham. Sitting outside her semi-pucca house in Bilgram block, Kasturi says, "My children get five fistful of panjiri once a month from the Aanganwadi Centre." Thirty-three year-old Kasturi has never, in her parents' village or her in-law's village seen an...

-The Hindu Health officials on a mission to check illegal use of scanning machines under the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and prevention of misuse) Act 1994 Kochi (Kerala): Is there a potential link between the high number of scanning machines in the private medical institutions, many of them allegedly without proper records, and the dipping child sex ratio in Kerala? Since the health officials don't want to misread the situation, they have been...