-Livemint.com * English speakers are richer, more educated and more likely to be upper caste, data from the Lok Foundation survey shows * Hindi is both the most widely spoken first language and second language in India English speakers are very much India’s elite, and their proportion may be shrinking, new data on the demographic profile of English language speakers in India suggests. The 2011 Census showed English is the primary language—mother tongue—of 256,000...

-VillageSquare.in Women trained as poshan sakhis, or nutrition friends, advice and help rural women, particularly expectant and lactating mothers, to eat nutritious food and overcome anemia and underweight deliveries Koraput (Odisha): Swapnarani (21), an expectant mother, finishes her household work fast to attend the monthly maitri baithak at her village Bhutanagar in Badakeranga panchayat of Odisha’s Koraput district. Maitri baithak, or friendship meeting, provides space for women to discuss issues that concern...

For long, economists have argued among themselves whether income should be the only criterion for measuring poverty. After all, in real life a person can face multiple deprivations, say, in terms of access to education, health and living standards, among others. The multidimensional poverty index (MPI), which offers a valuable complement to traditional income-based poverty measures, was first introduced in the 2010 Human Development Report (HDR). The MPI looks at...

-Livemint.comA new multidimensional calculation of poverty reveals that India's BIMARU states, despite having made some improvements, continue to be poorChennai: There?s very little evidence of convergence on social indicators among Indian states, new data on health, education and access to basic amenities between 1998-99 and 2015-16 shows. Over nearly two decades, the ?BIMARU? states have remained at the bottom, while Kerala, Punjab, Goa and Delhi remain at the top. Bihar...

-The Indian Express The data in India is flawed, marked by both under- and over-reporting. The question is not whether India’s women are safe, but whether they are free Very rarely does data become a political hot-button issue in India, dominating the shouty nightly news debates and the daily Twitter sniping. Earlier this month, it was about data on the status of women, following an international survey that found India to be...