That hospital births curb mother and child deaths is probably a no brainer. Convincing expectant mothers to get admitted to a hospital is only part of the problem in India’s rural healthcare system. The other challenge is abysmal infrastructure: There is just one hospital bed for every 10,000 Indians living in villages and one in 10 primary health centres in rural areas stumble along without doctors. The result is a human tragedy....

Seventeen-year-old Jayjeet Kumar of Gaya's Ghantadih village does not know much about complicated chemical reactions or for that matter, about QUADratic equations, the reason being that he is only a student of Class VIII. But when it comes to taking a robust crop from minimum investment, this teenager is miles ahead of many agriculture experts. So much so that the Ghantadih boy donned the role of a farming expert on...

The United Nations labour agency warned in a new study that efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labour are waning and called for a “re-energized” global campaign to end the scourge. The Global Report on Child Labour, released today, assessed progress made so far and highlighted the challenges that remain if the goal of eliminating the worst forms of child labour by the target date of 2016 is...

The proposed Food Security Bill should adopt a three-pronged strategy that constitutes a Universal Public Distribution System for all, low-cost foodgrains to the needy, and convergence in the delivery of nutrition safety net programmes.  In his latest budget speech, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced: “We are now ready with the draft Food Security Bill which will be placed in the public domain very soon.” Although no official draft has been...

Three men were on Saturday sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of murdering National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) engineer Satyendra Dubey, the young whistle-blower who had exposed corruption in a national highway project in Bihar, seven years ago. Mantu Kumar, Udai Kumar and Pinku Ravidas were handed the life sentence by a special CBI court judge Raghvendra Singh, who held them guilty of the murder of the 31-year-old IIT-Kanpur...