Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Sunday ruled out any coercive policies to stabilise population and said awareness among the people of the benefits of small families was the most effective way to achieve the goal. Speaking at a function to flag off a run to mark the World Population Day, the Minister said population stabilisation was extremely important, given that India has a share of 17...

What is the marriageable age for a girl in India? Well, there is no straight answer to this question, thanks to legal loopholes. Now, in a bid to dispel doubts, the National Commission for Women (NCW) has asked the government to consider bringing uniformity in the 'marriageable age' and 'age of consent' for girls. The need arises because of the disparity in laws and contradictory court judgments. Both the Hindu...

Every year, India adds the population of Australia to its already staggering ranks of 116.1 crore people. Every 10 years, we add the population of Brazil — the fifth most populous country in the world. As yet another World Population Day comes around on July 11, and India stands poised to eclipse China as the most populous country of the world, the government is gingerly attempting to bring incentive-based family planning...

The planned National Food Security Act represents a unique opportunity to achieve gains with respect to the public distribution system. However, the current draft is a non-starter. When I first visited Surguja district in Chhattisgarh nearly 10 years ago, it was one of those areas where the Public Distribution System (PDS) was virtually non-functional. I felt constrained to write, at that time, that “the whole system looks like it has been...

Young rag-pickers sifting through rubbish are a common image of India’s chronic poverty, but destitute children face new hazards picking apart old computers as part of the growing “e-waste” industry. Asif, aged seven, spends his days dismantling electronic equipment in a tiny, dimly-lit unit in east Delhi along with six other boys. “My work is to pick out these small black boxes,” he said, fingers deftly prising out integrated circuits from the...