-Scroll.in In the last ten years, Tamil Nadu has seen households' debt go out of control. Why? G Venkatasubramanian trots out some astonishing numbers. Over the last 15 years, he and his fellow researchers at Pondicherry's French Institute have been studying debt bondage among families in 20 villages in Tamil Nadu. Half of these settlements are in the coastal district of Cuddalore, and the others are in the adjoining district of Villupuram. Their study...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: Almost a quarter of India’s 370,000 beggars are Muslims, newly released data from the 2011 Census show, reinforcing that the community still lags behind on most counts despite the country’s rapid economic growth. Muslims, the largest minority who make up 14.2% of India’s 1.25-billion population, come out pretty much at the bottom of most socio-economic indices, even a decade after a high-level government probe into their historical disadvantages...

-The Hindu Data from Gujarat show such atrocities impossibly make up 163% of the total number of crimes. Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar lead the country in the number of cases registered of crimes against the Scheduled Castes, official data pertaining to 2013, 2014 and 2015 show. The National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) counts these States among those deserving special attention. While U.P. has witnessed a political war of words over an expelled...

-The Hindu India must convert its young population to a competitive advantage, and nutrition and health are foundational to that outcome. The “Global Nutrition Report 2016” once again demonstrates India’s slow overall progress in addressing chronic malnutrition, manifest in stunting (low weight for age), wasting (low weight for height), micronutrient deficiencies and over-weight. Our track record in reducing the proportion of undernourished children over the past decade has been modest at best,...

-The Hindu Most Dalits are not allowed entry into temples in villages; common crematoriums too are out of bounds to them, says activist. Ahmedabad: For the last three days, Gujarat’s Dalit community has been seething with anger over the public flogging of a group of Dalits who were skinning a dead cow in Mota Samadhiyala, a village near Una town in Saurashtra region on July 11. Four of them were brutally beaten with...