-Press release by Right to Food Campaign, dated 20th June, 2019 Two more starvation deaths have occurred in Jharkhand recently: one in Jama (Dumka district) and one in Mahuadanr (Latehar district). In both cases, the victim was a pensioner but he did not receive any pension payment since January 2019. Had pensions been paid on time, Motka Manjhi and Ramachandra Munda would perhaps be alive today. Enquiries from the welfare office in...

-Deccan Chronicle Encephalopathy is a disease in which the functioning of the brain is affected. Whose children go to bed hungry? In a country with glaring social and economic disparities, hunger is a deeply political issue which many would like to dodge. But that is at the heart of the big story about the recent child deaths in Muzaffarpur, Bihar’s litchi growing belt. At the time of writing, more than 100 children are...

-Livemint.com Many of the issues with India’s understaffed, overburdened police could stem from the growing criminalization of politics and reluctance for reform A brutal attack on a young doctor in West Bengal, allegedly by relatives of a patient who died on 10 June, triggered country-wide protests by doctors in the country. The incident highlights not just tensions in doctor-patient relationships but also points to a lack of respect for the rule of...

-The Pioneer New Delhi: Concerned about the water crisis and drought conditions, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote to Chief Ministers of all States advising them to conserve rainwater during the forthcoming monsoon. The PM had earlier written a personal letter to 'Gram Pradhans'(village chiefs) urging them to conserve rainwater.  The issue of drought conditions and water scarcity was discussed at the highest level at the NITI Aayog's governing council meeting last week....

-The Hindu The new GDP series has some methodological and sampling problems Former Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian recently claimed in a paper that India’s GDP growth from 2011-12 to 2016-17 was likely to have been overestimated. The Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council has rejected this claim, stating that his paper would “not stand the scrutiny of academic or policy research standards”. In a conversation modeRATed by T.C.A. Sharad Raghavan, Pronab Sen...