-Newsclick.in The NITI Aayog recommendations to reduce coverage under the NFSA are in tandem with liberalisation of agriculture pushed forward by the government with the passage of three farm laws. On February 28, 2020, it was reported that the central government’s think tank, NITI Aayog, in a discussion paper recommended a revision in the coverage of urban and rural populations under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013 to generate annual savings...

-Down to Earth One in every five Indians below 45 have at least one morbid condition Two in every three senior citizens in India suffer from some chronic disease, according to the first Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI) released by the Union Ministry of Family and Health Welfare on January 6 2020. Around 23 per cent of the elderly population (age 60 years and above) have multi-morbidities; elderly women are more likely...

Commenting on the recently released fifth round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) data for 17 states and five Union Territories (UTs) in an article published in The Indian Express (dated 6th January, 2021), Arvind Subramanian and his co-authors have stated that India has made progress on certain outcomes, including infant mortality rate (IMR), under-five mortality rate (U5MR) and neonatal mortality rate (NNMR). Relying on various rounds of NFHS data,...

-Down to Earth The percentage of women using safe menstrual products highest in Andaman and Nicobar Islands (98.9%); least in Bihar at 58.8% The percentage of women using sanitary products and practising hygiene during menstrual cycle increased across states and Union territories in the past decade-and-a-half, first phase of the recent National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) has found. Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Goa and Telangana...

-The Indian Express A female teenager from 9,000 years ago has been identified as the oldest hunter burial found in the Americas. Overturning the notion that hunting was exclusively a male domain while women only gathered, an analysis of burial records indicates 30-50% hunters from a similar period were female. About 9,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers buried a teenager with hunting tools in the Andes mountains of South America. When researchers analysed the...