A recent study finds that selective abortion of girls, especially for pregnancies after a firstborn girl, has increased substantially in India. CENSUS 2011, which brought out several positive features with regard to education, literacy and fertility rates, also confirmed the disturbing trend that had been reported for the first time in the 1991 Census – the increasing gap between the figures for male and female children in the 0-6 age...

Policies aiming to combat malnutrition are ignoring an entire generation of women whose overall health has a direct bearing on children’s growth, say advocacy groups and researchers Cradling a frail son on her hip and with a plastic bag stuffed with clothes in one hand, Tara Jadam walked into the rehabilitation centre inside the district hospital here to spend the next two weeks. On a hot afternoon, she has walked several miles...

-Reuters   Sitting at the edge of fields in the heart of India's grain bowl, Gurdayal Singh Malik shakes his head in resignation about the lack of workers needed for his 60-acre farm, blaming the government's flagship welfare program, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), for the shortage. Ever since the start of the program, which guarantees 100 days of work a year for rural households, the flow of...

The University Grants Commission has set up four committees to review educational development schemes for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, minorities and women, the relook prompted by statistics that show the measures haven’t been all that effective. While the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education for all categories in 2007-08 was 13.58, the corresponding percentage for SCs was 11.62 and for STs 9.86 per cent, according to HRD ministry figures for...

Its elimination is an international obligation, but there is a long way to go to meet the goal While governments and civil society commemorate the World Day Against Child Labour on June 12, over 20 crore children are still engaged as child labourers. More than half of them face the worst forms of child labour. Though India has the dubious distinction of having the largest number of child labourers, this...