India’s increasing wealth and improving literacy are apparently contributing to a national crisis of “missing girls,” with the number of sex-selective abortions up sharply among more affluent, educated families during the past two decades, according to a new study. The study found the problem of sex-selective abortions of girls has spread steadily across India after once being confined largely to a handful of conservative northern states. Researchers also found that women...

The draft Food Security Bill makes it compulsory for state governments to pay a food security allowance to targeted sections in case of failure to supply foodgrain through a sweeping welfare scheme targeted at nearly three-fourths of the population. The amount will be decided by the central government. The draft bill also presses for a radical overhaul of the food distribution system by giving incentives to independent agencies that procure...

-PTI   Delhi may soon become the first city in the country to give cash instead of subsidized kerosene to BPL families, a move aimed at controlling widespread pilferage of the fuel. As per the proposal put forth by chief minister Sheila Dikshit, cash equivalent of the monthly kerosene subsidy will be directly transferred to the bank account of the female head of the family. A BPL family is likely to...

If it took six decades for the Central government to honour the constitutional commitment to provide free and compulsory education to all children in the age group of 05-14 by putting in place the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2010, the State governments, barring a few, have failed to complete the necessary spadework even a year after the law was enacted. The spadework related to...

In a radical departure from official welfare norms, the draft Food Security Bill has made adult women heads of households selected for distribution of subsidised food grain. This highly unusual move for general welfare schemes wasn't part of the original discussions on the food bill. The bill has shaped into the big daddy, or in this case the big mummy, of all welfare schemes by providing free food to pregnant...