-The Indian Express While the new government has spoken about taking policy measures to address the needs of India's young population, nearly 10 crore of the elderly - citizens above 60 years of age - are generally neglected in policymaking. The latest Census data report that 15 per cent of the elderly live alone, mainly because of the nuclearisation of the family. As longevity is increasing and women tend to live...

-Tehelka Despite the serious toll it takes on women's health, female sterilisation remains the most prevalent form of contraception in India. While memories of the 21 months of Emergency in 1975-77, imposed by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, survives even today in the minds of Indian men as the fear of forced sterilisation, the country's population control policies have shifted over the years since then to target the politically less...

-The Hindu   The figure for households without toilets is 47 per cent for Hindu households as against 31 per cent for Muslims and 16 per cent for Christians and Sikhs, according to NSS data. Extensive new evidence shows that building toilets alone will not eliminate open defecation in India as not everyone who has access to toilet, especially men, believe that it's important to use it. Not having a toilet remains the major...

-The Indian Express More than four years after the RTE was passed, the state has no handle on the numbers of out-of-school children. The recently released report of the Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children, based on a situational analysis of India, opens a Pandora's box on data and methodological issues that plague the estimation of out-of-school children in India. As the report reveals, there is a multiplicity of definitions, sources of data...

-The Hindu   Research finds drastic consequences India's attempt at a China-type population control policy appears to have had drastic but unintended consequences. Laws enacted by State governments in the late 1990s and 2000s restricting political eligibility to candidates with two or less children did reduce family sizes in those States, but severely affected the sex ratio, a new research has found. Over the period, 11 Indian States passed laws disqualifying persons with more...