-The Indian Express Agriculture’s contribution to poverty reduction is five times more than that of metropolitan centres Speaking at the third BRICS Urbanisation Forum in Visakhapatnam on September 14, Deputy Chairman of the Niti Ayog, Arvind Panagariya, announced that “Without cities we can’t grow rapidly”. He added, “urbanisation plays an important role in poverty alleviation”. Both claims are exaggerated and somewhat misleading. A recent report prepared for the UN points out that, over...
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Hunger and hard facts -TK Rajalakshmi
-Frontline.in In the latest Global Hunger Index, India is bracketed in the category of countries where hunger levels are “serious”. But the policy responses on hunger and malnutrition in the country have been inadequate and faulty. In the second week of October, a few media reports in India highlighted significant data pertaining to global hunger. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) had released its Global Hunger Index (GHI), rating 118...
More »Time to decongest our prisons
-The Hindu The overcrowding of prisons in the country is a long-standing problem that is seldom addressed effectively. Even though the Supreme Court has, from time to time, raised the issue of prison reforms in general, and that of overcrowding in particular, measures to decongest jails have been sporadic and half-hearted. The issue is once again in the news, with the Supreme Court bemoaning that prisons in Delhi and nine States...
More »A low priority called health -Shah Alam Khan
-The Indian Express Poor Indians are forced to look towards the private sector for healthcare. Bhutan and Ethiopia spend more than India does. Ratna Devi and her nine-year-old daughter Seema (names changed) came to AIIMS, New Delhi. There was a large tumour on Seema’s knee. It had been thriving on the little girl for a year. The family was from Rajasthan, around 400 km from Delhi. The father was a farmer who...
More »India's poor Health Infrastructure bags it 143rd spot in 188 countries
-PTI New Delhi: India was given the 143rd spot in 188 countries by a global health study, that released on Friday. The study cited various challenges, including mortality rates, malaria hygiene and air pollution for India’s abysmal ranking. “Despite rapid economic growth, India was ranked 143rd, below Comoros and Ghana,” the first annual assessment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) health performance published in the Lancet and launched at a special event at the...
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