-The Hindu Vantangiyas, who derive their name from a Burmese tradition of hill cultivation, have lived in tin shacks without toilets for decades Gorakhpur (Uttar Pradesh): There is no proper road to Jungle Tinkonia-3. As its name suggests, one must pass a woodland of sal and teak trees to reach it. The situation gets even more precarious during monsoons and medical emergencies, as the village does not have any health centre. Its infrastructure is...

-The Indian Express According to MPI 2018 released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, there are 271 million fewer poor people in India in this period. New Delhi: In the decade between 2005-06 and 2015-16, India has halved its Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) — an index that looks beyond income poverty to take into account deprivations in health, education, and living standards...

-The Indian Express It is important to evaluate the consequences of the Centre’s agriculture policy. With elections around the corner, it’s too late for a course correction of the farm sector, but it’s an opportune time to document the unintended consequences of half-baked policies for the next five years. Otherwise, the momentum of existing policies will continue to feed rural economic misery. Agriculture GDP growth plummeted just as India’s agricultural trade surplus,...

-Livemint.com The problem escalated Due to the government’s focus on infrastructure during 2002-09, especially with the efforts made to promote public-private partnerships The past two years or so have seen rapidly increasing stress in the Indian banking sector, with non-performing assets (NPAs) steadily climbing from under 3% to over 13% of total assets. Loan-loss provisioning for NPAs has seriously eroded the capital base of several banks, limiting their ability to make further...

-The Hindu Most children under five die Due to preventable or treatable causes, says report An estimated 6.3 million children under 15 years of age died in 2017, or 1 every 5 seconds, mostly of preventable causes, according to the new mortality estimates released by UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Population Division and the World Bank Group on Tuesday. The report notes that for children everywhere, the most risky...