-The Economic Times It is a shame, said the Prime Minister, releasing a new report that says 42% of India's children suffer from malnutrition. Dr Manmohan Singh went on to talk of the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), the government's preferred scheme for tackling the problem, and of the need to to focus on 100 extremely backward districts.  An ICDS-like scheme is entirely appropriate but it would be a big mistake to...

-CNN-IBN   The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has taken BSP MLA Ram Prasad Jaiswal into custody in connection with the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scam. Jaiswal was taken into custody after the CBI interrogated him in two separate cases related to financial irregularities in the procurement of information material. Jaiswal was under scrutiny for the supply of construction material and labour to ANM training centres in Lucknow and adjacent districts under the...

India must not obsess with how fast its economy is growing and instead pay more attention to its human development indicators which are worse than even that of Bangladesh, Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen said. Sen, known among his peers as the Conscience of Economics, said slower growth is not a good enough reason for national gloom. If India really must feel upset, it should be because the country is...

Economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, currently the Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University believes that mere economic growth cannot be equated with the wellness of people. Social indicators are an equally important measure. In Bangalore for the presentation of the Infosys Prize for 2011 ( Sen is the jury chair for social sciences), he spoke to TOI on a variety of topics. Excerpts: Q:...

Patna, Dec. 9: Health hubs in the state capital are ill-prepared to fight a fire like the one that claimed more than 80 lives today at AMRI Hospitals in Calcutta. Most hospital and nursing homes in the city lack fire-fighting equipment or plan to evacuate patients and employees in case of a blaze. The state does not have any fire prevention rules, as the draft of the law has been entangled in...