Kerala, Punjab, Tamil Nadu high on HDI: study In a study done by Abusaleh Shariff, chief economist at the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER), Gujarat surprisingly emerges as a State with high levels of hunger, while simultaneously boasting high per capita income and consistent income stability. The hunger levels in Gujarat are higher than in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, and surprisingly even higher than in Uttar Pradesh, according to...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed a conference on ‘Leveraging agriculture for improving nutrition and health’ in New Delhi, organised by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), as part of International Policy Consultation. “Nutrition and health are issues are particularly topical today as the world faces rising food prices in many countries and there is growing recognition that climate change may endanger food security in many developing countries. Leveraging agriculture for...

Scale Up Nutrition coordinates global action to root out under-nutrition. This week in New Delhi, nearly 1,000 international officials, scientists, advocates and development specialists are coming together to discuss how agriculture can be leveraged to improve nutrition and health. Nearly one-sixth of the people in our world are affected by chronic hunger. At any time, around a quarter of all children suffer from under-nutrition. Not only are they more likely to die,...

With the number of non-governmental organisations growing in the country, the government is planning to bring them under a regulatory mechanism to make them accountable. As of now, there are no specific laws or regulations to regulate volunteerism in India. A task force, constituted to examine the issues related to the evolution of an independent, national level, self-regulatory agency for the voluntary organisations and develop accreditation methodologies by the Planning Commission,...

Bihar is the first state in India to put information about students, teachers and educational status online as part of an effort to improve education Bihar has become the first state in the country to put details of Classes 1 to 8 of all its 70,000 government schools online. Only recently, a survey of primary education showed that the state, considered one of the most poorly developed in the country, had...