-Economic and Political Weekly India’s fast food products must be subject to mandatory labelling. The role of fast or “junk” food with its concentration of fats, sugar and salt in the rapid multiplication of non-communicable lifestyle diseases has been the subject of countless studies over the past few decades, especially in the west. (A classic book from the United States with a title that says it all is Fast Food Nation.) Now, the...

Each time 25 year old Salma takes her one year old son Zubair to the Batla Clinic (a private clinic in Delhi) for a shot of the DPT, the cost of transportation and the vaccine adds up to approximately Rs.500.   When it is time for Zubair to take the next immunization dose, Salma may find that the expenses have entirely spiraled out of her reach. New vaccines and expensive brands of baby...

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...

Less than two in 10 women in India received medical attention by a qualified professional in 2010 while delivering at home. Contrary to popular belief, fewer women in urban India received medical attention while delivering at home than rural India - 10.8% against 16.2%. Nearly 1 in 4 births overall were attended by "untrained functionaries" - varying from as high as 53.5% in Jharkhand to as low as 0.2% in...

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...