Can the promise of a car or a mixer grinder help keep India's population in check? Well, that's what health authorities in the northern state of Rajasthan apparently believe. They are offering a cheap car, among other things, as a prize in an attempt to sign up some 20,000 people to meet an ambitious sterilisation target. Time will tell whether this turns out to be another gimmick or an innovative incentive. But...

When Sujatha’s husband learned that she had conceived just five months after they got married, he became agitated over what he called her "ill-timed pregnancy". To worsen her husband’s anxiety, a test to determine the sex of the foetus showed she was carrying a girl. Sujatha, a public school teacher, and her husband, a civil engineer – who asked that their full names be withheld – are from well-off and educated...

-The United Nations   As the world population approaches seven billion, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today stressed that ending global poverty and inequality is the key to unleashing the great human potential for prosperity and peaceful coexistence, while protecting the planet and safeguarding the natural resources that sustain humanity. “Later this year, a seven-billionth baby will be born into our world of complexity and contradiction,” Mr. Ban said in a message to mark...

The United Nations commemorates World Population Day next week against the backdrop of an upcoming landmark event: global population hitting the seven billion mark by late October this year. According to current projections, and with some of the world's poorest nations doubling their populations in the next decade, the second milestone will be in 2025: an eight billion population over the next 14 years. Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the U.N....

-The Telegraph   Bengal is the only state in India where maternal mortality rate has increased over a recent three-year period, although it is close to achieving key millennium development goal targets, indicating human and social development, for 2015. The findings of the latest nation-wide sample registration survey (SRS) shows that India’s maternal mortality rate (MMR), the number of women between 15 and 49 years dying from childbirth associated causes per 100,000...