-The Business Standard   Several Indian states have deployed information technology (IT) to improve the operations of their public distribution system (PDS). Madhya Pradesh has gone the farthest in this regard by issuing ration cards to only those with unique identification (UID) numbers. The state is also using the services of an IT firm. Since an IT system takes some time to be put in place and then some more to get...

IN preparing the approach paper to the Twelfth Five Year Plan, the Planning Commission engaged “all interested persons” in the country in a wide, web-based consultative exercise and also involved a varied group of “stakeholders”. The resulting document clearly indicates some awareness of the complex problems likely to be faced by the economy in the coming period. But it falls short of expectations because it does not provide a cohesive...

A report by an expert group on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) has suggested wide-ranging institutional reforms to regulate the public and the private sectors to ensure assured quality and rational pricing of healthcare services. The group, set up by the Planning Commission to develop a blue print and investment plan to meet the human resource requirements to achieve health for all by 2020, focuses on rational use of drugs. The extensive...

Amid policy battles over food production, energy resources and economic decline, one untapped natural resource that is guaranteed to boost production on a global scale has been stubbornly overlooked – the power of women in the labour force. According to the World Bank's 2012 World Development Report (WDR) "Gender Equality and Development", ensuring equal access for women farmers would increase maize yields by 11 to 16 percent in Malawi and 17...

China has reduced deaths among newborn babies by almost two-thirds in little over a decade — an unprecedented success rate that a new study says holds lessons for countries like India still struggling with high neonatal and maternal mortality rates. Deaths among newborn babies fell from 24.7 per 1,000 in 1996 to 9.3 in 2008 — a 62-per-cent decrease — according to a paper published in The Lancet medical journal on...