-Down to Earth Our policy makers should move away from the income criterion for estimating poverty and take cognisance of other indicators Amid mounting criticism and heated debates about the poverty line, a challenge has resurfaced to examine whether there could be a single non-monetary criterion of estimating poverty. A poverty line is a monetary cut-off point below which a person is deemed to be poor. Thus, any attempt to measure poverty...

-The United Nations Thirteen years after the world set the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), countries have made big strides to meet the eight anti-poverty targets by their 2015 deadline, says a United Nations report released today, which stresses that the unmet goals are still within reach, but nations need to step up their efforts to achieve them. "In more than a decade of experience in working towards the MDGs, we have learned...

-The Indian Express Why do women make better primary school teachers? If that question stumped many candidates who wrote the University Grants Commission's National Eligibility Test on Sunday, one of the multiple-choice answers listed for the question has outraged many. Because women "are available on lower salaries", said one of the four possible answers. About eight lakh candidates wrote the test across the country to qualify for junior research fellowships or university level...

-The Hindu That predators continue to enjoy impunity for crimes committed against women is now common knowledge. But less known is the fact that the worst perpetrators are often those most intimately known to women, or that the latter are vulnerable in consequence to life-long health-related risks. These frightening revelations are contained in a recent World Health Organisation report, issued in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical...

-PTI A top UN official has said that the violence against women is the "most pervasive" expression of gender-based discrimination and it remains unacceptably widespread. United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said, "Violence against women is the most pervasive expression of gender-based discrimination." She was speaking at the UN Human Rights Council during its annual full-day discussion on women's rights on Wednesday. "International developments have been mirrored by efforts at the national...