-The New York Times AGIRIPALLI: In this belt of villages near the fertile Krishna River delta, much is as it has been for generations: The cotton soil is as black, the mango trees as heavy with fruit, the tobacco fields as fragrant and deeply green as ever. But there have been curious changes in recent months. An old temple has received an expensive renovation, complete with a new banquet hall, courtesy of...

-The Indian Express Rajasthan government's decision to ‘target' free medicines and diagnostics is contrary to the recommended role of government in healthcare. In 2002-03, Abhijit Banerjee, Angus Deaton and Esther Duflo studied health facilities in rural Udaipur, Rajasthan. They found that facilities were poor and absenteeism was rampant. In 2013, we decided to revisit the same public health facilities. The motivation was to study two bold initiatives of the then Ashok Gehlot...

-IANS Barmer (Rajasthan): An Indian energy major and modern technology have combined to bring about a revolution in two districts of Rajasthan that were infamous due to the scarcity of potable water. Thanks to water ATMs, many otherwise arid villages here have 24X7 access to the commodity at the swipe of a card - at 20 litres for Rs.5. Under Cairn India's "Jeevan Amrit Project," kiosks with reverse osmosis (RO) plants have...

-Down to Earth Doctors will now have to prescribe only those medicines and procedures that have been listed under schemes Here is some good news for all the senior citizens in Delhi. From September 1, 2014, they can avail free consultation under 20 Central Government Health Schemes (CGHS). On Friday, the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Harsh Vardhan, unveiled a pilot project that can be extended further in future. "This is...

-The Business Standard Against NDA's 75 million target, UPA added 61 million in 2013-14 The government's financial inclusion scheme, Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, is an empty shell at the moment. The government heralded its achievement of clocking 15 million new bank accounts under the scheme by Thursday and looked ahead to the target of achieving 75 million accounts by January 2015. In fact, given that the UPA government added an additional 60.9...