-National Herald With a GHI of 31.4, India is at the high end of the “serious” category and this highlights the need for an urgent focus on interventions towards reducing malnutrition in the country The release of the Global Hunger Index (GHI) has once again brought the poor state of nutrition in India onto the spotlight. Although there are improvements in India’s hunger and nutrition indicators, on the whole its rank has...

-Livemint.com India’s Human Development Index score falls 27 % due to regional disparities in education, health parameters and living standards within the country New Delhi: India’s human development index (HDI) ranking for 2015 puts Asia’s third largest economy among a group of countries classed as “medium” in the list as opposed to “low” in the 1990s, thanks to factors like an increase in life expectancy and mean years of schooling in the...

-The Hindu The sense of impunity that drives discrimination against Dalits is at the heart of recent demands for the dilution, or even repeal, of the Act for prevention of atrocities against SCs and STs It is the sense of impunity nurtured by caste hierarchy that prepares the social ground for the “shockingly cruel and inhumane” crimes against Dalits called atrocities. It is this impunity that the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled...

-The Hindu The pursuit of full employment of labour cannot primarily rely on domestic private investment, much less FDI. Only public investment will steady us in the long run. We are increasingly told that the inflow of capital — particularly the foreign direct investment (FDI) variety — increases employment levels and contributes to economic growth. In a rare interview given to The Wall Street Journal in May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reinforced...

-Livemint.com IMF points to problem with redistribution of incomes as high growth rates are not reducing inequality New Delhi: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that both India and China face the social risk of growing inequality. By implication, it is suggesting that there is a problem with the redistribution of incomes in both these economies as high economic growth rates are not reducing inequality. In its regional economic outlook for Asia...