-The Hindu Business Line Ahmedabad: Gender-based discrimination leads to greater neglect of girls, in turn leading to malnourishment and retardation in female children, explained experts at the Jaipur-based IIHMR University recently. Experts and academicians from the university revealed that as much as 56 per cent of girls aged between 15 and 19 suffer from anaemia. Commenting on the National Girl Child Day, Goutam Sadhu, Associate Professor and in-charge, School of Rural Management at...

-The Hindu Only science can ensure commercial viability and protection of indigenous breeds. With the Tamil Nadu Governor clearing an ordinance on jallikattu, the question is whether the sport will help preserve indigenous breeds of cattle. The proponents of jallikattu say that first, if the sport is banned, owners of indigenous bulls may no longer find it worth preserving the indigenous variants. Second, they say it is the ‘untamed’ bull that is...

-The Financial Express In Madhya Pradesh’s tribal districts of Dewas and Khargone, the NGO, Samaj Pragati Sahayog, discourages cash transactions for agricultural inputs. The interest rates are usurious and vary according to commodities. For fertiliser, it is dheda—loan for the stuff has to be repaid 1.5 times over by the end of the harvest season. For pesticides it is sawa, or 1.25 times. Even barter can be extortionate. One quintal of...

-NDTV A recent headline in Quartz, an otherwise serious media agency, claims that Jammu and Kashmir is the first state in India to "commit to a universal basic income" (UBI). A glance at the original source quickly negates this claim: it is based on nothing more than "seeds of a thought" (sic) from the Finance Minister of J&K about possible cash transfers for a small minority of poor households. This is...

-Scroll.in India’s first chief statistician, Pronab Sen, is now country director of the International Growth Centre, which seeks to build effective growth facilities through engagement between policymakers and researchers. In this interview to Scroll.in, he speaks on the 50 days of demonetisation, its failings, its severe impact on the poor, the loss of credibility of the Reserve Bank of India, the push to make India a cashless or less-cash economy, and...