Over eight million girls are estimated to have been killed in the last decade alone leading to a dipping in the child sex ratio from 927 in 2001 to 914 in 2011. Sabu George is an activist who has been working on the issue of the girl child for over 25 years and tells Rema Nagarajan why there is a need to act immediately to boost the child sex ratio...

35 members to include Azad, Krishna Tirath The first meeting of reconstituted Board likely to be held in May last week The Board advises Centre on steps to prevent misuse of sex-selection techniques Concerned over the sharp decline in the child sex ratio as reflected in the provisional Census figures, the Centre has reconstituted the Central Supervisory Board set up under the Pre-conception & Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994 (PC & PNDT Act). Chaired...

Reconsidering its earlier decision, the United Progressive Alliance government is now contemplating not to give direct inclusion to all members of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities in the proposed BPL list if one goes by the modalities being laid out for conducting the census. Their inclusion will now be based on their ranking obtained from the number of deprivation indicators they satisfy. Similarly, minorities too don't get the same...

Low on economic progress, high on progressiveness. That sums up Darntoli, a tribal hamlet in Torpa block of Khunti district which clocked one of the highest sex ratios, 994 females for every 1,000 males in the 2011 Census, the provisional figures of which were released yesterday. According to 2001 Census, the figure was 971 females. The latest figures are much higher than the state average of 947 and the national average of...

Rising farm wages, which have a major impact on food prices, may force the government to devise a blueprint in which agricultural work is included under a widened ambit of a government's flagship job surety scheme, a key government official said. "We may need to come up with some sort of a special agreement for wage payment to beneficiaries working on farms since they are privately owned," Ashok Gulati, noted farm...