All epidemiological data in Chhattisgarh are ‘guesstimates' Underestimation of malaria mortality figures Public hospitals ill-equipped to handle severe cases Last week, the medical journal Lancet published the results of a malaria survey undertaken by researchers as part of the Million Deaths Study, an ambitious programme that strives to document the causes of nearly one million deaths in India from the period 1998 to 2014. As per the survey 2,05,000 Indians die of malaria every...

Former Arunachal Pradesh chief minister and Congress leader Gegong Apang was granted bail by Gauhati High Court today in connection with the Rs 1000 crore Public Distribution System Scam. Apang was arrested by the Special Investigation Cell (SIC) of Arunachal Pradesh Police on August 24 last for his alleged involvement in the scandal that took place while he was the chief minister of the frontier hill state in the North East. A...

RTI activists from Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad  have urged state governor K Sankaranarayanan to issue directions to the state information commission to update information on its official website. In a letter to the governor, the activists have pointed out that it is mandatory for all government and semi-government offices to voluntarily provide information of the office under section 4 of the RTI Act. "However, information about the commission's address, telephone numbers and...

We have just celebrated yet another birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma had a vision for free India, which was to give the nation a people-friendly governance—'Ramrajya'. Unfortunately, 63 years after Independence, this dream of Mahatma Gandhi, remains just a dream and will probably continue so in future too. 'Ramrajya'  cannot be a reality because our country's leaders have too many vices and too few...

VISHAL, the son of a farm labourer in the west Indian state of Maharashtra, is almost four. He should weigh around 16kg (35lb). But scooping him up from the floor costs his nursery teacher, a frail woman in a faded sari, little effort. She slips Vishal’s scrawny legs through two holes cut in the corners of a cloth sack, which she hooks to a weighing scale. The needle stops at...