-Hindustan Times Small and marginal farmers comprise 85% of the land holdings in India. Social Protection is a survival tool for the rural poor, who have no easy access to wage labour. India recognised the need for Social Protection early on and introduced a slew of Social Protection programmes like the National Rural Livelihoods Mission. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) provides 100 days of assured labour wages...

-The Times of India The Uniform Civil Code (UCC) is a dream long deferred, and now it looks like the courts can barely conceal their impatience. A Supreme Court bench, hearing a case on a Hindu woman's petition on inheritance, was recently stirred into ordering an examination of practices like polygamy and triple talaq in Muslim personal law, which it declared "injurious to public morals". The Centre is already on a deadline...

-The Indian Express Why early life investment matters, and what we should do about it. With the success in reducing child mortality, the challenge before India is to safeguard early-life conditions in order to prevent long-run loss in welfare for individuals and the economy. Malnutrition rates for India are extremely high, with about 38.4 per cent of children being stunted and 46 per cent underweight (National Family Health Survey, 2005-06). There...

-The Hindu Business Line That’s the mission Indradhanush has undertaken, so that India’s children get a better chance at life A shot in the arm is all it takes to protect our children from numerous life-threatening diseases. Five lakh children die every year due to vaccine-preventable diseases; 95 lakh are at risk because they are unimmunised or partially immunised. The figures are unacceptable for an immunisation programme which has been operational for...

-The Hindu An evaluation of the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) has concluded that the government-financed health insurance scheme had little or no impact on medical impoverishment in India. In fact, the study found that despite high enrolment in RSBY, catastrophic health expenditures (when medical expenses push a family into poverty), hospitalisation expenditure and the percentage of total household outgo on out-of-pocket (OOP) expenses — medicines and other consumables that are not...