Feature Article

Demographic factors have reappeared in the economic development debate with the emergence of the concept of the "demographic dividend'. With many developing countries experiencing a rapid decline in fertility, there has been overwhelming optimism that a demographic bonus will take these countries to greater economic heights. At the same time, there are pessimists doubting the ability of these countries to take advantage of the demographic dividend. This paper looks at the concept critically in the context of India.

The mid-day meal programme was initiated as a means of achieving universal primary education of satisfactory quality for all schoolchildren below the age of 14 by increasing enrolment, improving attendance and retention, and simultaneously improving nutritional status. This paper attempts to investigate some of these aspects based on primary data collected from Khurda district of Orissa. Data was collected from schools as well as from a sample of households of schoolchildren.

The draft report of the Comptroller and Auditor General on the working of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act was used by many sections of the media to strongly criticise this employment programme. Much of the coverage sensationalised the findings of the report. What did the CAG actually say? Where did the CAG fall short in its investigations?

The 1991 Coastal Regulation Zone Notification is to be replaced by rules based on a new concept called the Coastal Management Zone. This article, after discussing the proposed CMZ notification, points out several problem areas, particularly, for traditional fishing communities. The article also discusses ideas to address these issues.

Hundreds of migrant adivasis from Madhya Pradesh have died from acute silicosis (caused by inhaling silica) contracted while working in quartz crushing factories in central Gujarat. Thousands more face the same fate.

Subject to the approval of the shareholders and the usual regulatory and statutory rubber stamps, India's largest pharmaceutical company, Ranbaxy Laboratories, is expected, by the end of March 2009 to become a subsidiary of Daiichi Sankyo, one of the leading pharmaceutical companies of Japan.

I can still remember how people were dancing and kicking at the bamboo cordons and shouting "Posco Go Back', when we reached Balitutha, near Parikud in Orissa on April 1, 2008. People from many parts of the state, especially from the scene of anti-displacement struggles (including Kalinga Nagar), had joined the local people and the gathering was huge. Exactly four months earlier, on December 1, 2007, I had seen the same people demonstrate when I reached Dhinkia, the first village to be displaced by the Posco steel project. (Letter)

The response of the Greenland ice sheet to global warming is a source of concern notably because of its potential contribution to changes in the sea level. We demonstrated the natural vulnerability of the ice sheet by using pollen records from marine sediment off southwest Greenland that indicate important changes of the vegetation in Greenland over the past million years.

Antarctic Ice Sheet elevation changes, which are used to estimate changes in the mass of the interior regions, are caused by variations in the depth of the firn layer. We quantified the effects of temperature and accumulation variability on firn layer thickness by simulating the 1980

Estimating ice sheet mass changes from elevation surveys requires adjustments for snow density variations at the ice sheet surface.