-TheWire.in Married women are required to submit a marriage certificate or affidavit at the time of passport creation or renewal, though these documents are not demanded of married men. New Delhi: Despite senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj being at the helm in the Ministry of External Affairs, women passport applicants continue to face discrimination and harassment at regional passport offices and seva kendras across the country. Women applying for passports are finding that...

-TheWire.in A ‘data revolution’ is needed in terms of making disaggregated data available if India is to achieve – or get anywhere near – the ambitious sustainable development goals related to health and nutrition. Earlier this year, around two hundred countries came together and agreed in principle on a global indicator framework for the 2030 Agenda and the sustainable development goals (SDG). The 17 goals and 169 targets of the SDG framework...

-IndiaSpend.com Data demonstrate that discrimination against the SCs and STs in education, employment and property ownership continues despite affirmative action policies. Earlier this week, when upper-caste villagers in the western UP district of Firozabad tried to prevent the funeral of a Dalit paramilitary soldier killed in a terrorist ambush, it was the latest manifestation of widespread discrimination against the 305 million Indians belonging to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Upper-caste villagers refused to...

-Scroll.in In this parched region of Gujarat, cattle are either starving to death or have been abandoned. Two months ago, Bhimabhai Chhaiya made a hopeful trip to the government ration shop near his village of Sumri in Gujarat’s Jamnagar district. After three consecutive years of poor rainfall, the cotton farmer was heavily in debt. Food prices, meanwhile, seemed to be at an all-time high. Wheat, which had cost Rs 20 to Rs 25...

-The Times of India Jaipur: They were meant to ease processes and clean up corruption in distributing food grain to the poor. Instead, the e-Point of Sale (PoS) machines have thrown up more problems than solutions. Each of these devices costs roughly Rs 17,000. They are programmed to read fingerprints of those registered to receive subsidized grain, connect to the Aadhaar database over the Internet and authenticate the recipient. Clearly, things aren't playing...