-The Telegraph New Delhi: The gender gap in healthcare spending is increasing in India, and even educated and wealthy households spend less on women's health than on men's, scientists have reported. Demographers and other experts have documented for over a century how Indians discriminate against girls in healthcare and general well-being. New research now suggests that this gender disparity is amplified in adults and has increased over time. An analysis from two nationwide...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Air and dust pollution from road traffic may be a threat to Kashmir's silk sector, already dogged by the lack of cocoon-processing infrastructure, declining production and farmers' abandonment of silkworm-rearing. Scientists at the University of Kashmir, Srinagar, and the Central Sericulture Research Institute, Pampore, have warned that traffic pollution may significantly reduce food consumption by silkworms and their capacity to spin the fibre. Field observations suggest that silkworms do...

-HuffingtonPost.in Bindeshwar Sahu, a grain dealer, lives in Nauhar village in the Barheta panchayat of Bihar’s Banke Bazar block, a couple of hours away from the Buddhist township of Bodh Gaya. In early June, economists Jean Drèze and Reetika Khera, actively campaigning for the Right to Food Act, and their team of surveyors requested the Block Development Officer (BDO), Sanjay Kumar, to look into Nauhar’s persistent complaints of irregularities into the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Free health-care services during childbirth remain a pipe dream for most of India's poor, whether it relates to diagnostic tests, medicines, transport or even food, despite the Union health ministry launching a "free entitlements" programme five years ago. The families of most women who seek childbirth in government hospitals are forced to pay for supposedly "free" services, at times experiencing catastrophic expenditures likely to accentuate their poverty, two...

-HuffingtonPost.in NEW DELHI: Disregarding the Supreme Court order, which limited linking the Aadhaar card to six government schemes, the University Grants Commission has made it "mandatory" for students to provide biometric data before they can avail of "government subsidies, scholarships and fellowships." On June 29, 2016, UGC secretary Jaspal S. Sandhu sent a letter to Vice-Chancellors of all universities and institutes, which said that Aadhaar has been made "mandatory for disbursement of...