-Kafila.org With depressing regularity, the newspapers have been reporting farmers' suicides in many states. Recently, P Sainath wrote on BBC that around 296,438 farmers have committed suicide since 1995. He also mentions that cash crop cultivators of cotton, sugar cane, vanilla, pepper, groundnut etc account for the bulk of those suicides. According to a PIL heard by the Supreme Court in December 2014, around 3146 farmers in Maharashtra have committed suicide...

-Business Standard Eight states and UTs have Muslim share of population in excess of national average of 13% The argument given by supporters of the ghar wapsi (homecoming) campaign is that unless corrective measures are taken up urgently, there is a danger to the existing demographic profile of the country. Many leaders of the Sangh parivar this reporter spoke to say that the way the population of some religious groups is growing,...

-Economic and Political Weekly Assessing the progress made in reducing under-nutrition among children who are less than two years old in Maharashtra between 2005-06 and 2012, this article points out that child under-nutrition, especially stunting, declined significantly in the state during this period. It holds that this decline can be associated with the interventions initiated through the Rajmata Jijau Mother-Child Health and Nutrition Mission, which began in 2005, and that this...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The public distribution system remains the bedrock of India's food security system and the Food Security Act (2013) has only increased its importance. At the same time, the PDS administration has been subject to reform, change and experimentation. States have been experimenting ways to reduce leakages and maladministration. Since 2007, Bihar has used coupons to administer the PDS in order to curb leakages at the fair price...

-Economic and Political Weekly Examining the structural transformation in India and its developed states to know whether they have passed the Lewis turning point, this paper finds that there was slow structural change in labour markets at the national level. But states such as Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana are on the verge of the Lewis turning point with faster non-farm sector growth, high per capita income, urbanisation,...