-The Hindu Education and exposure to a community health worker too score higher than age of marriage in accessing a facility, says study. Poverty, education, and exposure to a community health worker are more important than age at marriage in determining whether a mother will be able to have a safe birth in a medical facility, according to a first-of-its-kind study on utilisation of institutional delivery in the country. The research comes at...

After the release of the second phase data of the National Family Health Survey Fifth Round (NFHS-5), media commentators and experts have written that the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) for India has gone down just below the replacement-level fertility. The TFR for the entire nation was 2.2 in 2015-16, which decreased to 2.0 in 2019-21.   According to the United Nations, the replacement-level fertility is reached when the TFR of a...

The virility of Muslim men vis-à-vis men from other religious communities have often been used as a political tool and to create a divisive agenda just before elections for getting votes from the majority of the Indian electorate who are Hindus. Instead of focusing on positive agendas like human development, employment generation, and poverty reduction, political campaigns just before the elections oftentimes reduce to mere communal propaganda (when a lot...

-Newsclick.in The AIDWA pointed out that before the amendment, the 2009 Act already provided for the registration of Child Marriages, which appears to give legitimacy to such marriages. The All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) has called upon the Rajasthan government to take measures to reduce Child Marriages after the state Assembly passed an amendment to a 2009 legislation amid uproar. The Rajasthan state Assembly on Friday passed a bill to amend the...

-Down to Earth Cyclones in India, particularly in the Sundarbans, made locals vulnerable to traffickers and drove them into forced labour, the report flagged  Climate change-induced extreme weather events put women, children and minorities at risk of modern slavery and human trafficking. The phenomenon is on the rise in India, among other countries, warned the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and Anti-Slavery International in a recent report.  Modern slavery — including...