-The Hindu   An improvement in sanitation and cleanliness will eliminate much of the difference in malnutrition between India and the rest of the world, and across Indian States Historically the greatest advances in longevity and mortality reduction have come not from treatment of individual disease but from public health. This includes modern drainage and sewerage systems (sewage treatment plants), drinking water systems that produce and deliver disease-free water and solid waste disposal...

-Economic and Political Weekly Corruption in Indian medicine is back on the front pages. One would think that there has been an abrupt spurt in corrupt practices or a major scandal. Nothing of that sort has happened. However, there have been some interesting developments for the focus to shift back to what is really a very old affliction. This is an update on recent happenings as the entrepreneurial spirit of the...

-Daily Pioneer Aware that convincing people, particularly in rural India, to build and use toilets in their homes, is a cumbersome task, the Centre has asked the State Governments to rope in various departments like education and health to raise awareness about the importance of sanitation in rural areas. The move aims to make the country open defecation free (ODF) by 2019. The Modi Government in its maiden budget 2014-15 had...

-New York Times News Service SHEOHAR (Bihar): He wore thick black eyeliner to ward off the evil eye, but Vivek, a tiny 1-year-old living in a village of mud huts and diminutive people, had nonetheless fallen victim to India's great scourge of malnutrition. His parents seemed to be doing all the right things. His mother still breast-fed him. His family had six goats, access to fresh buffalo milk and a hut filled...

-The Hindu   The national discourse is so superficial that it only talks of foreign direct investment, investment allowance, tax sops and the like which are just about a twentieth to a sixth of the national economy. It did not even notice paragraph 102 in the Union budget speech which is about half of India's economy. Commentators see facts hidden in budgets as the "devil's in the detail." This presumes that only...