-The Hindu     Gaps between Muslims and the national average on most human development outcomes are narrowing, reflecting their improving condition The Prime Minister's high-level Sachar Committee, which analysed the social, economic and educational status of Muslims in India - based on data for the 1990s, concluded that Muslims were doing much worse than the rest of the population on most social indicators. Here, we examine how the socio-economic indicators of Muslims...

-The Business Standard The Congress party's suggested right to health, if implemented, would be a game-changer This is the season for party manifestos with their vague and quite unexciting promises. But in this sea of platitudes, sometimes something stands out that is worth talking about, because, if implemented, it would be a game-changer. For me this is the reported inclusion of the right to health in the Congress party's manifesto. It is well...

-Live Mint Mint examines why millions of women are missing from farms, factories, colleges, and offices in India, which has one of the lowest ratios of working women in the world Mumbai: Every monsoon, minivans ferrying women labourers can be seen making their way from the small sleepy town of Wardha to Waifad village, 18 kilometres away. Urban workers from Wardha have come to occupy an integral part of Waifad's farm...

-The Hindu Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram's estimate for India's 2014-15 food subsidy bill of Rs 1,15,000 crore in the interim budget is more than twice of India's Poverty Gap, or the cost of pushing all households above the poverty line if cash transfers were used instead. The Poverty Gap for India, as per the latest NSSO Consumption Expenditure Survey data available (for the year 2011-12) is Rs. 55,744 crore. A...

-Outlook Shillong: More than 18 years after it was rolled out in Meghalaya, the mid-day meal scheme has failed to keep children in schools or provide dietary nutrition - the two objectives of the centrally-sponsored scheme. A survey of the schools in the state where the scheme was launched in 1995 discovered that over 50 per cent children still suffered from stunted growth and that the food served is mostly deficient in...