The time has come for optimal pricing of water and power to prevent an unlimited pumping of groundwater and aid better coordination amongst competing demands for the scarce resource, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said here on Tuesday. Dr. Singh's observations come at a time when there is a debate on the pricing of water and privatisation of services in the sector. The Ministry of Water Resources is working on a reforms-oriented...

Health ministry instead plans to roll out an integrated national health survey; experts question decision   The Union government has decided to discontinue the country’s most reliable and widely tracked health survey, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), the fourth round of which was to be conducted in 2012-13, in a move that has been criticized by development experts. The ministry of health and family welfare is instead planning to roll out an...

-The Business Standard   Now MGNREGA may bear the burden of PDS' failure This newspaper reported on Tuesday that the rural development ministry approached the Food ministry suggesting that work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) be paid for using foodgrain. The impetus for the rural development ministry’s action is perhaps understandable. The Act provides for the possibility of a fraction of wages being paid in kind; the allocation...

The Sonia-Gandhi led National Advisory Council is pushing to amend the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008 to make it more inclusive and include a comprehensive social security package. The council, which met last month, pitched for a security package that would contain health insurance, maternity assistance, a life-cum-disability insurance scheme and a pension plan that it proposed should be provided through a single window backed by an inter-ministerial committee consisting...

-The Economic Times Fertiliser will continue to be a key input in the crop production system as there are no alternatives to meet nutritional requirement of crops. Post-Independence, a substantial increase in indigenous production and consumption of urea and a range of P and K fertilisers made the country self-reliant both in fertiliser and Food grain production. But farm production is stagnant though fertiliser use has been rising. The bone of...