An expert panel appointed by the Centre has found to its horror that fluorosis has reached epidemic proportions in Garhwa as a result of the Jharkhand government’s negligence and failure to check the alarming spread of the disease. The team, appointed by the Union ministry of drinking water and sanitation, visited the district last month and found men, women and children of all ages with deformities due to fluoride poisoning from...

-The Business Standard   PDS no prerequisite for grain entitlement to general-category families. The contours of the Food Security Bill are firming up, what with the proposed legislation now stipulating a monthly minimum of seven kilograms of grains per person for the country’s priority households. In fact, this category of families — with a pregnant woman, dependent children or a differently-abled member — will get even higher quota depending upon the availability, as...

As a national debate rages over the Indian poverty line, in the heart of Bandra, one of Mumbai’s richest suburbs, in a shanty with barely enough standing space for two adults, three-year-old Priya Doiphode, clad in a red tee shirt, lies listless on a string bed. Priya is one of the 83,243 children in Mumbai who are malnourished, according to government data, a statistic that makes Mumbai the most malnourished...

India has markedly improved the access of girls to education, besides bringing down fertility and infant mortality rates, but the World Development Report 2012 on ‘Gender and Development’ issued warnings on other fronts—women’s labour participation rates remain stagnant and domestic violence is alarmingly high. The report, launched on Thursday at the World Bank, also highlighted high rates of domestic abuse and their relationship to reproductive health apart from high maternal mortality...

-The Business Standard   Young women in India are much better off than their mothers, but they fare much worse than their counterparts in many developing countries when it comes to the physical survival rate of women and participation in labour force, says a report by the World Bank. The World Development Report titled ‘Gender Equality and Development’ looks at gender inequality as not just a moral but also an economic issue. The report...