-Outlook Mumbai: Weak coordination among government agencies was one of the challenges in tackling vector-borne diseases (such as malaria, dengue) in India, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The WHO is going to initiate an awareness campaign in the metropolis on such diseases by roping in the famed 'dabbawalas' (tiffin carriers) of the city, it said. The organisation, with Maharashtra Health Department and Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Charity Trust, today called...

-Bloomberg Countries should tackle climate change out of self-interest Climate change is already contributing to sea-level rise and flooding. Droughts and storms are growing more intense. Ice caps are melting; snow cover is diminishing. And the ocean is becoming more acidic. These changes threaten human food supplies, even as the global demand for food increases, and the problems can only be expected to worsen in the decades ahead, as will their ripple...

-The Business Standard Since the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government decided to put on hold the Aadhaar-based subsidy transfer for domestic liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), questions have been raised about the future of one of Congress' most ambitious initiatives aimed at plugging leakages. Two months after the government move, a pioneering study by economists Karthik Muralidharan, Paul Niehaus and Sandip Sukhtankar showed leakages dropped 12 per cent when smart cards were...

-SocialProgressImperative.org The 2014 Social Progress Index reveals striking differences across countries in their social performance, highlights the very different strengths and weaknesses of individual countries, and provides concrete guidance for national policy agendas. The Index is the sum of three dimensions: Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Wellbeing, and Opportunity. Each dimension is made up of four equally weighted individual components scored on an objective scale from 0-100. This scale is determined by...

-The Indian Express Data shows that the state is high on growth, low on development. What does this say about the government's priorities? No matter what the political leanings, many people have come to accept the premise that Gujarat has performed a lot better than the rest of India in terms of development over the last decade. People are even talking about the Gujarat model of development as something for the whole...