-Down to Earth Infrastructure for primary healthcare has decreased in the past decade As India moves towards the goal of universal health coverage (UHC), its inadequate health infrastructure is going to pose major problems. In the past few years, the percentage of shortfall in basic infrastructure has increased, instead of declining, says a report released Thursday. Despite massive spending under the National Rural Health Mission, the shortfall in sub-centres increased by...

-Deccan Chronicle ONGOLE: After fluoride, it has been found that ground water in 46 villages under Peddacherlapallil, Chandrasekhara Puram and Chimakurthy mandals in Prakasam district contains uranium. This was revealed in a chemical analysis test conducted by the rural Water supply department at a testing lab in Hyderabad. Groundwater in Diwakarapuram village under P.C. Palli mandal contains the highest traces of uranium, 48.863 parts per billion (ppb), and in Hariramarajapalem Colony it is...

-The Indian Express Mawat (Haryana): Farmers Hatti, Ibrahim and Hurmat, of Dhana village in Haryana's Mewat district, died several years ago - the first two in 2001; Hurmat in 2006. But according to the Haryana Horticulture Department, they applied for - and received - subsidy under the National Mission on Micro Irrigation (NMMI) in 2011. "When we went to the district horticulture department office to claim subsidy in 2013, we were told...

-PTI Srinagar: When the floods wreaked havoc in Kashmir and plunged most parts of the Valley into darkness, few doctors at a lone maternity care hospital in Srinagar, lent a ray of light to people's lives by performing birth surgeries under candlelight. Doctors at the Lal Ded Hospital, whose ground floor was submerged by flood waters from Jhelum, performed six deliveries under the candlelight as the electricity supply to the hospital was...

-The Financial Express A mechanism is needed to compensate farmers for not exercising their right to sell productive land but continue to grow foodgrains. India finds itself in a piquant situation. While its population, and with it the number of poor, is growing, its cultivable land is not only shrinking, more worryingly, the economic returns of the agricultural use are diminishing vis-a-vis non-agricultural use. The situation may not be alarming right now,...