-Scroll.in Caste and religious identity have to be explicitly accounted for if the high burden of chronic malnourishment in India is to be addressed. There are few more glaring holes in the Indian development story than child health and nutrition. India has one of the highest rates of child stunting in the world: more than a third of its children under five years are short enough for their age to be counted as...

-Livemint.com Development—healthcare, jobs, education—inevitably lowers the total fertility rate Give me a rupee for every time I have heard “demographic advantage" applied to India in the last several years, and I’d be sitting on a small fortune. Invariably, the mentions are tinged with pride, as if we’ve suddenly transformed into a commendably and overwhelmingly young nation. Truth is, we used to be even younger and are getting steadily older. But that’s a story...

-Newsclick.in As schools remain closed, poor tribal villagers cannot afford smartphones and computers to aid their children’s online education, leaving this young population facing a precarious future. “I wish doors of the primary school are unlocked for our children after being closed for 16 months and if it does not happen the younger generation will permanently fall out of the education system,” says Dhaneshwari Devi of Dumbi village in Latehar district of...

-The Hindu 40% belong to SC/ST communities; 88% of IIT Guwahati dropouts, 76% of IIT Delhi from reserved categories. Almost 63% of the undergraduate dropouts at the top seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) over the last five years are from the reserved categories, according to education Ministry data given in response to a question in the Rajya Sabha today. Almost 40% were from the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities. In...

-The Hindu The case for reservations for women and transgender persons in State jobs and higher education The Bihar government recently announced 33% horizontal reservation for women in State engineering and medical colleges. While reservation for Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) is referred to as vertical reservation, horizontal reservation refers to the equal opportunity provided to other categories of beneficiaries, such as...