-Scroll.in The number of people living in modern slavery in India rose by 4.1 million in the last two years, showed the Global Slavery Index, 2016 “No one can imagine such a painful life. There is much torture on me and I am punished even for my minor mistakes like a child. My family is always living under threats. There is also physical violence against me and my family members.” This is a...

-The Indian Express According to a Survey conducted by the Registrar General of India, Punjab is a vegetarian state and Telengana has the highest population of non-vegetarians in the country. A recently-released Survey conducted by the Registrar General of India (RGI) in 2014 busts so many myths about the vegetarian and non-vegetarian divide in the country. A big surprise lies in the fact that the land of butter chicken is predominantly vegetarian. There...

Although public goods are meant for everyone to enable living life with human dignity, certain groups are systematically deprived to access them, says a new report from the Centre for Equity Studies -- a NGO based in Delhi. Put differently, not all sections of the society are able to access or enjoy public goods and services on an equal footing, despite social justice being one of the key provisions of...

-Business Standard Large green patches, apart from recorded forests, to get protection. Clarity to help industry In a move that is expected to have far-reaching consequences for protection of forests while ensuring ease of doing business for mining sector, realty sector and industry, the Union environment ministry has defined what constitutes a forest under the Forest Conservation Act 1980 (FCA). The legal definition, pending since 2006, will help in identifying areas where development...

-The Indian Express The fight against malnutrition depends on more than economic growth. The data from the National Family Health Survey or NFHS-4 (although only for 13 states and 2 UTs) confirms the finding from the Rapid Survey on Children (RSoC) of 2015 that there has been a significant decline in child malnutrition in the country during the last decade. In spite of a number of initiatives having been launched to combat...