-Livemint.com Low support price, land acquisition bill, short supply of fertilizers among triggers for clashes, shows analysis New Delhi: Security agencies have warned the government of growing farmer unrest across the country as rural distress worsens. There has been a spurt in clashes among farmers and government agencies, particularly in states such as Maharashtra, which is facing acute rural distress. Till June end, 74 incidents were reported nationwide, twice the number recorded...

-The Indian Express India has the highest number of child deaths in the world, with an estimated 1.2 million deaths in 2015 — 20 per cent of the 5.9 million global deaths. Chennai: Has India fallen short of the under-five child mortality rate target of 42 per 1,000 live births by 2015? While new data from medical journal The Lancet said it had, officials at the Union Health and Family Welfare...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal has asked the central government to increase wages under the national rural job scheme to at least Rs 300 a day to attract workers, a view apparently shared by many states as well as activists. An official in the rural development ministry said many state governments had already written to the Centre citing difficulties in implementing the MGNREGA because of the low...

-Business Standard Study on reservation in schools New Delhi: The Delhi government recently ordered all nurseries, playschools and pre-primary schools, set up on land allotted by the government, to reserve 25 per cent of seats for poor students. This is in continuation of a 2007 order of the then government directing 395 private schools to reserve 20 per cent of new admissions for poor students. The decision to reserve seats in such bastions...

-Livemint.com Water availability has not deteriorated only because of the poor monsoon Amartya Sen showed in his seminal work on famines that mass starvation is not necessarily the result of inadequate food supply. He opened up new areas of inquiry that focussed on what have come to be known as entitlement failures. Sen has famously argued that human mistakes forced people into starvation in Bengal in 1943 even though food production in...