-The Hindu New Delhi: Against the backdrop of increasing violence against women and children across the country, the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development had launched the ‘Ahimsa Messenger' Programme in last August to address the critical issue at the grass roots level through creating numerous Ahimsa Messengers. The messengers would be generating awareness on basic legal rights, procedures and provisions amongst women and children; they would also serve as link...

-The Hindu As the country develops economically, its double burden of malnutrition and its health implications will increasingly affect women and those who are socio-economically weak India has one of the highest burdens of underweight women in the world, with rising obesity levels. Using the World Health Organisation classification based on body mass index, or BMI (the ratio of the weight of the body in kilograms to the square of its height...

-The Business Standard Changing aspirations and strong rural demand could explain why core inflation may not decline fast enough Recently, the Reserve Bank of India governor exuded confidence that the Indian economy will do fairly better in the current fiscal. While it is difficult to envisage a significant turnaround, we believe interpreting the recent inflation uptick may be the key to such optimism. We also think that inflation (both wholesale and retail)...

-Reuters NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: India looks set for bumper harvests of winter crops such as wheat, chickpeas and rapeseed in the wake of a strong monsoon that has left the soil moist and topped up reservoirs. The crops will follow bountiful summer harvests of rice and soybeans due to the rains, with New Delhi looking to boost agricultural growth to cool double-digit food inflation and revive a slowing economy as manufacturing struggles. With next...

-Down to Earth Prevalence of underweight children down from 76 to 43 per cent for boys, 74 to 42 per cent for girls over past four decades, says National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau Food intake of people in rural India has been declining over the past four decades, but the status of nutrition among children has improved over this period. This was revealed in third repeat survey by National Nutrition Monitoring...