-The Financial Express MGNREGA must be tweaked in implementation, not design. Before his tragic demise, the Union minister for rural development, Gopinath Munde, gave a clear indication of the new government's priorities on MGNREGA. Both these priorities are vital: using the programme for the creation of productive assets to combat drought and poverty and ensuring timely payment of wages. More than two decades of liberalisation and high economic growth have left India...
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Scheduled tribes show worrying decline in child sex ratio
-The Times of India The scheduled tribes in India have traditionally had the highest sex ratios - the number of women for every 1,000 men - among all communities. But, detailed data on individual tribal communities just put out by the census shows that the situation is worsening in almost each case. And the sex ratio in the population aged zero to six is significantly lower. In 2011, India's ST population as...
More »India’s Poor Face High Infant Deaths-KS Harikrishnan
-IPS News ATTAPPADI, India, May 4 2014 (IPS) - The death of a 10-day-old girl last November in the Attappadi tribal belt of Kerala, one of India's best performing states in terms of human development indices, shows how the country's battle against child mortality is far from won. The infant's mother, Saraswathy, a 20-year-old from the Kurumba tribe, was admitted to a government hospital, and delivered the next day. At 1.8 kg,...
More »All schools must have separate toilets for girls and boys: Supreme Court -M Suchitra
-Down to Earth Apex court says toilets, drinking water facilities are integral to RTE Act; pulls up Andhra Pradesh government for not ensuring these facilities in its schools The Supreme Court has ruled that all schools must have separate toilets for boys and girls, and also facilities for water for drinking and other purposes. The court's May 9 verdict has made it clear that these were integral to Right of Children...
More »Saving for rainy days -Savvy Soumya Misra
-Down to Earth People of West Bengal's Sunderbans region are setting up grain banks to safeguard against food crisis Subedan Bibi's mud hut is a few metres from the banks of the Bakchara river, a distributary of the Hugli in Sunderbans region of South 24 Parganas. When the river is in spate she and most others of Goyadham village move to the main market in the nearby block. "Floods and storms destroy...
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