It seems that a long-drawn-out battle among economists about economic growth trickling down into development has found some solid answer. A recent paper published in the Lancet Global Health journal (April, 2014), which has been jointly written by a team of experts based on evidence from 121 Demographic and Health Surveys from 36 low-income and middle-income countries shows that there exists little or no association between increases in per capita...

-The Hindu The dropout rate remains troublingly high Private school enrolment continues to rise, but the already low levels of what children are learning in schools - both government and private - continue to fall, new data shows. The Hindu is reporting exclusively on the findings of the 2011-12 round of India Human Development Survey (IHDS), a representative national sample of 42,000 households, carried out by the National Council for Applied Economic Research...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Recent government's decision to allow field trials of genetically modified (GM) food crops has come under severe attack of a parliamentary committee which criticized the environment minister M Veerappa Moily for giving his nod to this effect. The panel suggested that any test should not be undertaken till the Centre puts in place all regulatory, monitoring, oversight and surveillance structure. Referring to the recent decision of Moily...

-The Hindu Four out of ten women in India still have no say in their marriage, eight out of ten need permission to visit a doctor, six out of ten practise some form of head covering, and the average Indian household gives over Rs. 30,000 in dowry. These are among the findings of a major new large-scale sample survey shared exclusively with The Hindu. The National Council for Applied Economic...

-Deccan Herald New Delhi: The decade-old mid-day meal scheme for primary school children, rolled out with the twin aims of fighting malnutrition and improving attendance by providing cooked food, still appears too little to fight the menace of malnutrition in many states, including Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat. A large number of elementary school children are suffering from "severe" malnutrition in as many as nine states, with the highest figure of...