-The Indian Express   India’s poor are closely bunched up near the poverty line. This could make poverty alleviation more manageable.    A recent World Bank (WB) report brought out poverty ratios across countries. According to these estimates, poverty in India in 2011-12 could be as low as 12.4 per cent if we use “modified mixed reference period” (MMRP), in which there are three recall periods depending on the nature of items. This...

-The Asian Age It’s a huge story. And it’s not getting the kind of media attention it deserves. It’s a story about India’s farmers. It’s a story about the ongoing agrarian crisis in the country in the wake of two successive years of drought. If one looks only at the figures of growth of gross domestic product which tend to make headlines in financial publications, there’s no story for agriculture comprises...

-Livemint.com In a paper released in ‘Lancet’, a team of researchers identified seven structural problems in India’s healthcare system Mumbai: Despite recording several gains in health in recent years, India continues to lag several health indicators such as mortality rates and malnutrition. The country carries a disproportionate burden of the world’s sick. Home to 17.5% of earth’s population, India accounts for 20% of the global burden of disease, 27% of all...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: India's traditionally wet northeastern region has experienced a higher frequency of drought than arid western India over the past 15 years, researchers have said, cautioning that this trend has implications for crop productivity in the region. An analysis of the summer monsoon rainfall since 2000 has shown that the probability of drought was 54 per cent in the northeastern region and 27 per cent in the traditionally arid...

-The Indian Express The residents of Nimkheda, a small settlement of 1,674 people in Haryana’s Mewat district, are visibly unsettled and worried Nimkheda (Mewat, Haryana): Dressed in a white salwar-kameez, her dupatta wrapped as a headscarf, an upset Ashubi Khan (55) thumped her right palm with her fist as she spoke in Mewati. “My illiteracy is not my fault, but a reflection of the state’s failure to fulfil its responsibilities. Did our...