The steadily rising rate of economic growth in India has recently been around 8 percent per year (it is expected to be 9 percent this year), and there is much speculation about whether and when India may catch up with and surpass China’s over 10 percent growth rate. Despite the evident excitement that this subject seems to cause in India and abroad, it is surely rather silly to be obsessed...

Low on economic progress, high on progressiveness. That sums up Darntoli, a tribal hamlet in Torpa block of Khunti district which clocked one of the highest sex ratios, 994 females for every 1,000 males in the 2011 Census, the provisional figures of which were released yesterday. According to 2001 Census, the figure was 971 females. The latest figures are much higher than the state average of 947 and the national average of...

“Most common TB test is more than 125 years old; TB drugs are more than 40 years old” Microsoft chairman and philanthropist Bill Gates on Thursday said the large number of deaths in the world due to tuberculosis was unacceptable and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was all for supporting a low-cost affordable vaccine for the disease. “Whatever helps the poorest, we are committed to it,'' Mr. Gates said at...

Hundreds of infants in Kenya received their first shots against pneumococcal disease today at a special United Nations-backed event to celebrate the global roll-out of vaccines targeting the world’s leading cause of child deaths – pneumonia. President Mwai Kibaki joined parents, health workers, ambassadors and donors in Nairobi to witness children being immunised as part of the Government’s formal introduction of pneumococcal vaccine in its routine immunisation programme for all children. Kenya...

I was awakened early one morning recently by someone who said he was enormously enjoying my on-going debate on economic growth in India. I was very pleased that I had given someone some joy, but I also wondered what on earth he could be talking about, since I have not been involved in any such debate. As it happens, I am getting a steady stream of telephone calls and electronic...