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UNBELIEVABLE: Indiaspend - Caught on Camera

More grain, less protein behind India’s rising obesity

A decade ago, in March 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi first mentioned obesity in his 18th Mann Ki Baat address. Since then, Modi has spoken about the issue on at least 18 occasions, including during his last Independence Day speech.

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Why C-Section deliveries are rising in India

More than a quarter of India’s births now happen through Caesarean-section (C-section) deliveries, driven primarily by high rates of surgical intervention in private hospitals.

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Safety rules are routinely flouted in India’s factories

Indian factories routinely flout occupational health and safety rules, even as inspections remain scant, and overworked, underpaid workers operate faulty machinery leading to accidents and injuries, many of which are not counted in official statistics, a new report shows.

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The farm failures keeping India hooked on imported oil

India meets only 44 percent of its domestic demand for edible oil and spends more than $20 billion a year on imports, a bill that is bound to increase with the war in West Asia disrupting global supply chains and India’s foreign currency reserves under strain.

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Extreme heat imperils chronic disease patients in informal settlements

Within hours of sunrise, the two-room flats in the government-constructed apartment in New Rajarajeshwari Peta in Vijayawada feels like a pot on a stove.

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Medical boards are gatekeeping abortion access

The Supreme Court, on April 30, disagreed with an appeal by a medical board, and permitted a 15-year-old girl in her third trimester to terminate her pregnancy. This was the second such case this year alone where the Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has argued for the…

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Piping hot: India’s delivery economy runs on worker heat stress

“No matter if it is hot or raining, we have to work," says 30-year-old Rakesh Sahu (name changed), from Uttar Pradesh’s Jaunpur, who works as a delivery agent for Swiggy in Delhi. When IndiaSpend met him in early April in Saket, he had a cloth wrapped around his head, and a cap…

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From rights to red tape: India’s transgender law amendment

“Only I knew what I felt, trapped in a body I did not recognise or feel at home in,” says Ayaan, a 24-year-old transman. In 2016, his parents took him to consult a doctor in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar, who tried to counsel his family of his need for support, hormone-replacement…

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India’s cities are crumbling. The rich are seeking urban oases

India’s top metros—Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai, home to 75 million people—rank among the world’s 10 most populous cities. However, “population scale has not translated proportionately into urban productivity, liveability or global economic influence,” the Union government’s Economic Survey 2025-26 admits.

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Four times over target: India's TB elimination problem

India recorded about 2.7 million cases of tuberculosis in 2025. Based on population projections for that year, this translates to an incidence of about 185 cases per 100,000 population.

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How Araku’s coffee farmers are tackling climate change

Coffee farmer Vanthala Raju was 21 when he applied to get his rights over forest land recognised in 2014. It took two years for an official to acknowledge his application, four more for processing. Throughout this period, he faced harassment from authorities.

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Elder care was meant to reach homes. In most of India, it hasn’t

India’s increasing demographic of the elderly needs long-term care, daily support and palliative services. While national policies emphasise care at home, government data show that access to such services remains limited.

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Govt claims it is blood-sufficient. But is it?

On August 19, 2025, the government claimed that the annual blood requirement for the county was met the previous year. This, despite several reports and studies on shortage of blood in various parts of the country and significant state, and intra-state variations in the availability of blood.

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1 in 4 tap water samples fail tests. 3 in 4 households drink it untreated

One in four water samples collected from India’s household tap connections did not meet microbiological standards, according to a 2024 assessment of the Jal Jeevan Mission. While 76 percent of samples passed laboratory tests, 24 percent did not, according to the Ministry of Jal Shakti’s national report.

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How the ‘pharmacy of the world’ lets down Indians

India is known as the ‘Pharmacy of the World’ for being the largest global supplier of generic medicines and affordable drugs. Yet, policy gaps compel India’s poor to struggle to source medicines, sometimes at exorbitant rates.

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Health budget grows every year. So why isn’t public healthcare improving?

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a Rs 1.06 lakh crore health budget for 2026-27, a 9 percent increase from the current financial year. Yet persistent gaps in utilisation, staffing and quality suggest higher allocations alone cannot fix India's public health crisis.

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9 in 10 Indians do not exercise

Only one in 10 Indians exercised on a given day in 2024, according to the Time Use Survey by the National Statistics Office (NSO). Exercise participation has increased since 2019, when 5.7 percent Indians reported exercising, but remains close to the 8 percent recorded in the 1998 survey conducted by the Central…

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How African swine fever, policy gaps are devastating Assam’s pig farmers

For 15 years, Binita and Mridul Buragohain built their pig farm in Betbari village, starting with two pigs and slowly expanding to a herd of 75. In October last year, one of their pigs fell ill, and five others died soon after from African Swine Fever (ASF). The rest had…

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India’s data landscape is broken. Here’s what needs to change

By the end of last year, 16 major Indian datasets were delayed across sectors such as health, education, economy, environment, and demography as IndiaSpend reported in 2024. Ten of these have since been released.

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How India’s Rs 34,000 crore CSR spending is distributed

Indian firms spend about Rs 34,000 crore on corporate social responsibility (CSR), but most of this flows into low-poverty areas, and larger firms are leaving funds unspent. Many large companies are using their own foundations to take up activities, which gives them better control.

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In ‘the land of abundant water’, Jal Jeevan has a cruel truth

Anita Tripura wakes up at 3.30 a.m., pulls out her teesing – – a large bamboo basket with aluminium pots stacked up inside it – and marches downhill in darkness. The teesing is attached to a long cloth-band that hangs from her forehead. A flickering kerosene lamp that she holds…

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How Himalayan states have higher food prices

The cost of groceries per person per day in Mizoram was Rs 77.5 in November 2025, about Rs 20 more than the all-India average (Rs 57), as per Food Price Watch, IndiaSpend’s realtime dashboard, which aggregates food prices from various groups across the country to estimate how much an individual or…

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Two-thirds of Delhi does not have reliable air quality data

As winter deepens, New Delhi is once again losing the fight for breath. Every winter, Delhi continues to choke under hazardous air — and this year is no exception. On November 18, the Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB’s) 24-hour bulletin recorded a city-wide Air Quality Index (AQI) of 374, placing Delhi…

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130 kmph tracks, 55 kmph speed: Why are Indian trains still this slow despite Mission Raftaar?

In March 2025, the Ministry of Railways had stated that most of its divisions maintain “over 90% punctuality”. Behind the headline figure lies the everyday reality of passengers, with the punctuality index actually declining. Reliance on diesel locomotives, signal failures and congestion lead to most delays, data show and experts say.

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More two-wheelers, gig workers under pressure: In India, 9 bike riders die every hour

Indian roads are increasingly becoming more dangerous for its most vulnerable users, an IndiaSpend analysis of national data shows. In a decade to 2023, road accident deaths increased 24 percent to about 173,000, but pedestrian deaths nearly tripled, those of two-wheeler riders nearly doubled, and cyclist deaths rose 13 percent.

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