-The Telegraph New Delhi: Premature deaths from kidney failure rose in India by about 38 per cent over the past decade, doctors said in a research study released on Tuesday that attributes this trend primarily to untreated or poorly managed diabetes. The study, based on an analysis of deaths in over a million households across the country, has found that kidney failure increased to 2.9 per cent of the tracked deaths between...

-The Hindu One of the first things to get affected during natural disasters and accidents is the communication network. In a country where over a billion use mobile phones, providing mobile connectivity during a disaster, at least for emergency usage, is a priority. In this context, an IIT Madras team is developing a low-cost communication system that can enable rescue workers to communicate with a locally established centre and, through this centre,...

-The Hindu Shaktikanta Das says Rs. 12.44 lakh crore in invalid notes may not have come back to banks The Finance Ministry on Thursday said the Rs. 12.44 lakh crore figure reported by the Reserve Bank of India as the amount having been deposited in banks since the November 8 demonetisation announcement could be inflated due to double-counting. Department of Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said the RBI had infused three times the...

-Scroll.in Panchayats have no funds to hire and pay hordes of workers forced to return home from cities. Demonetisation has exposed the fragile state of the government’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. In Uttar Pradesh, in particular, an ever-burgeoning army of migrant labourers returning to their villages for lack of work in the cities, as a direct result of the cash crisis, has led to a mad scramble for employment...

-Hindustan Times Plight of the migrants: Jobless labourers return home after demonetisation Twenty-three-year-old Avinash Kumar is planning to postpone his sister’s marriage. The money he had saved, working at a sweatshop in New Delhi’s Mongolpuri, is all but gone. Kumar lost his job in about two weeks from the time Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a ban on Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, in a move that he termed as the biggest-ever...