Infant mortality (deaths within the first year after birth) fell to 28 in 2020 from 30 in 2019 and 39 in 2014, while under-five mortality declined to 32 in 2020 from 35 in 2019 and 45 in 2014. Six st...

Progress seldom follows a linear pattern; new challenges are created with every hurdle that is crossed. This would be the correct inference to draw from the findings of the annual report of the Civil ...

India’s goal of correcting its gender imbalance seems to have grown more distant. The National Family Health Survey has found that a number of states that had made progress in terms of the sex r...

Kerala is among eight states where the sex ratio at birth, a measure of prenatal sex determination, has worsened over the past five years, the latest National Family Health Survey findings released on...

India could lose on average more than 1,200 female foetuses daily over the next decade, researchers have forecast in a study that underscores the failure of the country’s ban on prenatal sex dis...

The most dangerous enemy that has been created in the Indian psyche over the decades is Pakistan. For successive Indian governments, Pakistan, touted as the most dangerous enemy, has actually been a t...

A declining sex ratio or the number of females per 1,000 males dipping to 900 in Hazaribagh has set alarm bells ringing. The central ministry of women and child development recently sent a letter to H...

Every silver lining has a cloud. The fourth National Family Health Survey, conducted in the year 2015-16, confirms that the incidence of child marriage has shown a steady decline all over India, excep...

Numbers seldom tell their own story faithfully. The civil registration system of birth and deaths in 2016 reveals that there has been a steep decline in the sex ratio at birth in the southern states, ...

A ray of light sometimes does penetrate the darkness. This was demonstrated by data from the Union ministry of women and child development which revealed that 60 per cent of the children adopted in In...