A woman who was forced into marriage as a minor and suffered years of abuse before obtaining a divorce and qualifying for the Madhya Pradesh state civil service has petitioned Supreme Court that a law to discourage child marriage is being used unfairly to deny her a job. Responding to Ratnarashi Pandey's plea, the Supre8me Court on Monday issued notice to the MP government on her challenging the validity of a...

-Live Mint At a time when India plans a multi-pronged attack on malnutrition in 200 high-burden districts, it will pay to examine the cracks in state institutions that have led to past failures and can still derail well-intentioned plans. Melghat, a tribal corner in the northeastern fringes of India’s richest state—Maharashtra—is an apt example of almost everything that has gone wrong in India’s response to malnutrition and child deaths. Every 14th child dies...

Money from the Department for International Development has helped pay for a controversial programme that has led to miscarriages and even deaths after botched operations Tens of millions of pounds of UK aid money have been spent on a programme that has forcibly sterilised Indian women and men, the Observer has learned. Many have died as a result of botched operations, while others have been left bleeding and in agony. A...

Progressive strengthening of public facilities is the only way to reach medical services to the population as a whole. “The best form of providing health protection would be to change the economic system which produces ill health, and to liquidate ignorance, poverty and unemployment. The practice of each individual purchasing his own medical care does not work. It is unjust, inefficient, wasteful and completely outmoded ... In our highly geared, modern...

HETA, India – At the entrance to this village in India’s eastern state of Jharkhand, a large pond glistened under the bright autumn sun. Yellow and blue lilies surrounded it. A tailor was stitching clothes outside his shop while a few boys nearby were playing carrom on the lid of a rusted oil barrel. It was a tranquil, rustic setting – a candidate for a landscape painting, it seemed. But it...