-The Hindu   The Census of 2011 revealed that the sex ratio in the 0-6 age group is worse now than in any decade since Independence. It is indisputable that this distressing trend is the result of more people having easier access to medical technologies that reveal the sex of the foetus, and opting for sex-selective abortions. New research published by The Lancet provides further insights into the phenomenon of ‘missing...

AFTER MORE than a year’s debate on enumerating caste in Census 2011, it was finally decided in a Cabinet meeting on 19 May that all Indians would be asked their caste and religion along with their economic status. The caste census will be conducted as part of the ‘below poverty line’ (BPL) Survey, to be carried out by the Ministries of Rural Development and Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation along...

-The Indian Express   Packets of tobacco products will have to carry new harsher pictorial warnings from December 1 as the government today came out with separate sets of gory graphics of cancer-affected lungs and mouth for smoking and smokeless forms of tobacco. The warnings will be rotated every two years instead of the existing duration of one year, apparently in keeping with a demand from the tobacco industry. The Union Ministry of...

A 30-year Survey of the poor gives a wake-up call POVERTY is becoming hereditary in India, at least for a sizeable population. That is the conclusion derived from a three-decade tracking of poor households in rural India. A Survey by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC), an international association of researchers and academicians, claims that those who are chronically poor may pass on poverty to their next generation. What’s more, people residing...

-The Hindustan Times   Rich and educated Indian parents are increasingly aborting a second girl child and instead waiting for a boy, driving 90% of the country’s citizens into zones with sex ratios that are unnaturally and often dangerously low. The sex ratio for second-born children in families where the first-born is a girl has dropped overall from 906 girls per 1000 boys in 1990 to 836 in 2005, new research published in...