Drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) is now at record levels with Asia bearing the brunt of the epidemic, says the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) in a report released today that also calls for better diagnosis of the disease. In some parts of the world, one in four people with TB becomes ill with a form of the disease that can no longer be treated with standard drugs, according to WHO’s...

For the preparation of the Commonwealth Games 2010, around Rs 17,400 crore have been spent on Delhi by the government over the past three years. The over-used word deployed by public leaders and officials to describe the city, which they hope will emerge from these exertions, is ‘world-class’. But forgotten are the men and women whose toil will make this ‘world-class’ city possible. At its peak in 2008-09, an estimated...

It is true that, at 119 crore person-days, the employment created this year by the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), the government’s flagship programme, is tiny, a fraction of one percentage point of the total employment in the country. But a more meaningful way of looking at its potential impact, however, is to see that around half the country’s workforce has registered for a job under it...

‘Improved law and order gave the vital impetus'  ‘State Govt. has ushered in wide-ranging reforms' ‘Development expendiTures have increased' One of India's poorest State Bihar has started Turning around based on the all-inclusive reforms initiated by the State Government, including improved law and order and higher public expendiTures, the World Bank has said. “There are visible signs of a Turnaround where the Bihar Government has been implementing wide-ranging reforms. State revenues and development...

A new drive has started to bring development to the remote north-eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. In a letter from the region, the BBC's former India correspondent Mark Tully says there are fears that it will undermine the traditional tribal culTure of the area and alienate the population. Driving from the east of Arunachal Pradesh to its oldest town, Pasighat, I was made all too aware of the state's underdevelopment....