-Livemint.com While investment demand was anyway weak when the NDA came to power in 2014, private consumption has also started deceleRATing due to demonetisation New Delhi: The National DemocRATic Alliance (NDA) won a landslide in the 2014 general election with the promise of fast-tracking economic growth and creating jobs. It replaced the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government that was mired in corruption scandals and had mismanaged the economy. Three years on,...

-IANS The study, published in the journal Lancet, found a 3.3 per cent annual decline in mortality RATes of neonates (infants less than one month old) and 5.4 per cent for those in the age-group from one month to 59 months. Toronto: India has averted nearly one million deaths of children under five years of age since 2005, owing to a significant decrease in deaths from preventable diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhoea,...

-Livemint.com The trajectory of wealth concentRATion in the country, not just the levels of recently estimated inequality, is important A flurry of estimates regarding Indian inequality have captured public interest recently. Whether one believes the wealth inequality numbers presented by Credit Suisse or the distributional income accounts by Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty, evidence seems to state that India has high economic disparities. But inequality is to be expected in a developing...

-Hindustan Times Women don’t have enough power within households to insist that the cash provided be used for nutritional needs. The THR system is a way to ensure that they at least get some essential nutrition. The decision to do away with take-home RATions (THR) in aanganwadis for infants under three and pregnant and lactating mothers, and to replace the scheme with cash transfers is not a good idea. The initial impetus...

-PTI 'If public spending is slashed, it will mean cutting down expenditure on social sector scheme." There is hardly any private investment,' explained Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley provided no indication today of any cut in excise duty on petrol and diesel to cushion the spike in RATes, saying that the government needs revenue to support public spending without which growth will suffer. States levy a high amount...