KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

-The Hindu Business Line The National Food Security Act could adopt standardised criteria to identify beneficiaries across States/UTs India’s development report cards have long been plagued by high incidence of malnutrition, making it an often-cited example of the nation’s growth conundrum. With the country being home to more than one-third of undernourished children, it is evident that the problem underlines the need for a targeted and multi-sectoral approach, with the benefits of...

-Down to Earth People in low-, middle-income countries often have to pay out of their pocket and seek care elsewhere Funding in primary healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries is insufficient and access to it inequitable, a new study has reiterated. Patients often have to pay for the services out of their pocket, the report published in the journal The Lancet Global Health April 4, 2022 noted, adding that these systems have...

-The Telegraph Minister says GOI has not enumerated caste-wise population, other than SCs and STs in Census since independence, not in line with statement made to SC The Centre has told Parliament that it “has not enumerated” caste-wise populations other than those of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes since Independence, contradicting a statement it made in the Supreme Court three months ago. In that court affidavit of September 21, the social justice...

-The Hindu The Socio-Economic Caste Census, 2011 was organised not as an OBC survey but to get the caste status of all in the country in order to improve the delivery of targeted benefits, the Centre said. The Supreme Court on Wednesday said the law negated a caste census and “the Constitution believes in population and not in caste or religion” even as the Centre insisted that data collated during a Socio-Economic...