-The Hindu The Socio-Economic Caste Census, 2011 was organised not as an OBC survey but to get the caste status of all in the country in order to improve the delivery of targeted benefits, the Centre said. The Supreme Court on Wednesday said the law negated a caste census and “the Constitution believes in population and not in caste or religion” even as the Centre insisted that data collated during a Socio-Economic...

-TheFederal.in Fund allocation could be done much more effectively with the availability of current data, said Palanivel Thiaga Rajan The Tamil Nadu government has scope for conducting accurate state-specific sample surveys, similar to the ones done by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) to improve availability of data for taking policy decisions, said Minister for Finance and Human Resources Management Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, in Chennai on Monday (December 6). The Tamil Nadu minister...

The virility of Muslim men vis-à-vis men from other religious communities have often been used as a political tool and to create a divisive agenda just before elections for getting votes from the majority of the Indian electorate who are Hindus. Instead of focusing on positive agendas like human development, employment generation, and poverty reduction, political campaigns just before the elections oftentimes reduce to mere communal propaganda (when a lot...

-Down to Earth Rate of returns for females higher than that of males; intervention to address gaps in India’s mental healthcare for adolescents need India has the highest adolescent population in the world — the country is home to over 250 million adolescents, according to India’s 2011 Census.  This has increasingly built a case for investing in them. The Population Foundation of India, a non-profit, commissioned a study ‘Investing in Adolescent Development, which examines...

-The Hindu The study was done by the Centre for Socio-Economic and Environmental Studies in Kochi Kerala needs to focus on the challenges posed by an increasingly ageing population in the midst of a demographic transition that has seen fertility levels falling below the replacement level and life expectancy remaining at 75 years. The State must draw up long-term strategies to face a situation in which there is a decline in the...