-PTI United Nations: India has been ranked a low 131 out of 167 nations on a global index that measures the level of information and communication technology access, even as the number of households with Internet and computer has increased in the country over the last five years. UN International Telecommunications Union’s flagship annual Measuring the Information Society Report said that globally 3.2 billion people are now online, representing 43.4 per cent...

-The Indian Express TISS report maps pitfalls in Rajiv Gandhi Jeevandayee Arogya Yojana Mumbai: OVER three-fifths or 63 per cent beneficiaries of the state government’s Rajiv Gandhi Jeevandayee Arogya Yojana (RGJAY) made out-of-pocket (OOP) payments for services after admission to hospitals, and a significantly higher proportion of patients from Below Poverty Line (BPL) families (88.23 per cent) reported paying for diagnostics, medications, or consumables, according to a report by the Tata...

-The Hindu Business Line As the Right to Information Act completes 10 years, we examine how RTI has changed people’s lives, become a byword for democracy, and helped alter the relationship between citizen and state Mintu Devi’s relationship with the ration shop changed the day she filed an RTI. In the jhuggis of New Seemapuri, situated on the northeastern edge of Delhi, she is a legend. The 37-year-old mother of four is...

-Down to Earth From providing agricultural information for specific countries to identifying trends in the sector, censuses serve a variety of purpose In the backdrop of a round of country-driven agricultural censuses which will begin in 2016 to gather information and statistics on the global agriculture sector, senior FAO statiscian Jairo Castano discusses with Down To Earth the importance of the exercise. * How helpful are agricultural censuses in gathering information and statistics...

-Economic and Political Weekly The platform known as the JAM Trinity (an acronym for Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar and mobile numbers) may enable a shift from the current Public Distribution System, based on price subsidies, to the direct transfer of benefits. However, it is incorrect to argue that JAM technologies will necessarily lead to the demise of the PDS. State-level experiences of computerisation, recounted here, reveal that the same technologies can...