-The Hindu The Campaign Against Sex Selective Abortion (CASSA) has submitted a memorandum to political parties and the State government seeking steps to improve the child sex ratio and sex ratio at birth. Representatives of the CASSA, Human Rights Foundation and Centre for Child Rights Development, met mediapersons here on Tuesday to explain their demands. “In 2001, the mortality rate for girl children was high in 11 districts. Despite the Pre-Conception and...

-The Wall Street Journal These days, Indian policymakers are debating how to create a vast new food entitlement program. There is talk of poor households struggling to cope with high food prices and malnourishment among their children. What you don’t hear much about, however, is the most tragic and outrageous consequence of India’s failure to feed its people adequately: starvation deaths. India is a nation that prides itself on having been self-sufficient in...

Human-animal conflict, difficult terrain come in their way Until about two-and-a-half years ago, 10-year-old K. Nagaraj would go to Kovai Courtrallam every day, where he hawked fruits and snacks to tourists. On one such day, officials of the National Child Labour Project found the lad selling titbits and whisked him away to the special centre for rehabilitating child workers at Karunya Nagar, about 30-km west of Coimbatore. Nagaraj who was admitted to class...

The professional divide on Tendulkar's estimation goes a long way back A committee is being set up to devise yet another methodology to estimate poverty in India. The step has led to some unhappiness among economists and experts that it amounts to junking the services and competence of an expert like the late Suresh Tendulkar, whose study is sought to be replaced. Under pressure from all sides over its estimate of people...

Manual scavenging is still widespread and India has a long way to go in getting rid of the scourge, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has said. Over 1 per cent of all households in the country still rely on the practice and neither urban nor rural areas are immune to it, Ramesh said on Tuesday citing recent census data. “The census results are a shocker. Manual scavenging is very much there in...