-The Telegraph New Delhi: India continues to lag on human development indicators in spite of a slew of welfare programmes, with a UNDP report released today ranking it 135th among 187 countries that were judged on progress in areas such as life expectancy, education, income and employment.   Analysts blame India's poor performance on lack of accountability in implementation of the welfare programmes. Former National Advisory Council member N.C. Saxena said state governments...

-The Times of India Improvement in human development measures has slowed down in the past few years, according to the 2014 Human Development Report (HDR) released on 24 July in Tokyo. The human development index (HDI), a measure derived from life expectancy, education levels and incomes, barely grew from 0.700 in 2012 to 0.702 in 2013. Even that small improvement could be at risk of getting reversed given the bleak picture of...

-Down to Earth While northeast states such as Manipur and Nagaland have shown a sharp deterioration in child sex ratio, the skewed ratio has improved marginally in Punjab and Haryana The steadily declining child sex ratio in India has reached emergency proportions and urgent action must be taken to alleviate this crisis, warned a latest United Nations (UN) study. The report, released on Tuesday, has attributed much of the declining numbers to...

-Down to Earth Blog The performance of nutrition indicators amongst Dalits is improving, it is nowhere near the catch-up pace Does a new government and a strong Prime Minister claiming to hail from the backward caste augur Achche Din for Dalits too? We hope so! But political commitment-or lack of it-has multiple manifestations. In a deeply stratified society like India with entrenched elitism, people from the Scheduled Caste (referred to as Dalits...

-Press Information Bureau/ Ministry of Finance   The Economic Survey 2013-14 presented by the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitely has asked policy makers to design and execute development strategies targeting the young population that was approximately 58 per cent in 2001 and will increase to more than 64 per cent in 2021. The Government has to take timely action to make people healthy, educated and adequately skilled. Social-sector expenditure Expenditure on social services...