-The Hindu     Focus attention on pregnancy and first two years of child's life Stunting can be contained by focussing attention on pregnancy and the first two years of a child's life, a new UNICEF report has said. Stunting is not only about a child being too short for his or her age. It can also mean suffering from stunted development of the brain and cognitive capacity. The report offers evidence that real progress is...

-Deccan Herald With just a little more than a year left before the nation goes to polls, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance Government has proposed to raise the allocation for rural development to Rs 80194 crore in 2013-14, although an amount of about Rs 21371 crore is estimated to be left unspent from the fund earmarked for the sector this year. The Ministry of rural Development is likely to leave unutilized...

-DNA For a rural management institute working to uplift lives of the underpriviliged, absence of norms of reservation for scheduled castes (SC) and scheduled tribes (ST) is an irony. Or it seemed so to Union minister for rural development Jairam Ramesh, who was the chief guest at Saturday's convocation of the Institute of rural Management (Irma), Anand. As he began the convocation address, Jairam asked Irma chairman Deep Joshi to enforce reservation...

The recent Supreme Court judgment dismissing pharma giant Novartis’ claim for patent protections in India for its award-winning and prohibitively priced anti-leukemia drug Glivec has renewed the focus on accessibly-priced drugs – in particular the failure of the Indian public healthcare system and health policy to ensure affordable drugs for all. Studies show that as much as 70% of health spending in India comes from out-of-pocket payments, with 50-80% of...

-PTI New Delhi: The government is planning to open all-women post offices in rural areas where working women are available in good numbers. "We want to open such post offices in other parts of the country as well. The Department (of Posts) decides where women are available and doing jobs. If you go in to rural areas, you would not be able to find a (big) number. We will start with...