-The Indian Express Progress on non-communicable diseases should not be benchmarked against sustainable development goals. In the last week of September, India’s health ministry received the prestigious UN Inter-Agency Task Force Award for “outstanding contribution to the achievement of NCD (Non-Communicable Diseases) related SDG targets”. At the same time, a Lancet paper by the monitoring group, NCD Countdown 2030, contended that India will fall short of the NCD targets pertaining to SDGS....

-The Telegraph Glare on late diagnosis and poor management New Delhi: Delayed diagnosis, poor chronic disease management skills and faith in unproven traditional-medicine therapies are barriers to the effective treatment of diabetes in India and other South Asian countries, a group of doctors has cautioned. A seven-member team from academic institutions and hospitals in India, Britain and Australia has said an improvement in doctors’ skills and the release of updated diabetes management...

-Livemint.com Preference for government jobs is highest among college-educated rural youth, a segment seen at the forefront of recent agitations for quotas, shows analysis In one of the largest such exercises ever conducted in the world, millions of applicants are appearing this month for an online recruitment test conducted by the Indian Railways. The Railways Recruitment Board (RRB) has received more than 24 million applications for roughly 120,000 vacancies in the organization. Most...

A recent report by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) enlightens one about the state of farmers' income and indebtedness in 2015-16. Entitled NABARD All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey 2016-17 – in short NAFIS 2016-17 – the report says that between 2012-13 and 2015-16 the average monthly income for agricultural households grew by around 39 percent. One may recall that the Key Indicators of Situation Assessment Survey...

-Livemint.com Rural development secretary Amarjeet Sinha on how MGNREGS has evolved since 2006 to result in income, acreage, water tables, productivity and fodder availability Agrarian distress and rural distress are terms used interchangeably, but the rural economy today is very different from what it was many years ago, given the diversification of rural incomes and hence incorrect to think one means the other, says Amarjeet Sinha, secretary, ministry of rural development. In...