-The Business Standard Bihar's model of health care through mobile phones is finding many takers Many things may be going wrong in India, but the one thing that has gone right is the reach of the mobile phone. It has bridged the divide between the rural and the urban areas, the rich and the poor. Governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and phone companies are realising the potential of the mobile phone as a tool...

-The Hindu There has to be a national mission to ensure that rural homes have access to clean cooking fuel and stoves instead of the killer chulhas that are claiming the lives of large numbers of women A large section of our country's population, nearly 75 per cent of rural and 22 per cent of urban households, still uses biomass for daily cooking. An estimated 80 per cent of the residential energy...

-The Economic Times Over the last decade the UPA government has tried to reduce poverty by legislating a regime of rights accompanied by the national rural employment guarantee (NREG) programme -spending Rs 1,70,000 crore on this strategy. This strategy would have been fine if the transformation of India from a strong currency, high growth and low inflation economy to aweak currency, low growth and high inflation economy had been accompanied by a...

-Outlook As the Manmohan Singh government makes evident its unfriendliness to villages, the nation hurtles towards disaster. It's a danger no one wants to face. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been trying for years to make us believe that agriculture is a vast marshland in which a huge population is stuck ankle- to neck-deep and it is his duty to rescue them. "Our salvation lies in moving people out of agriculture," he...

-IPS News ROME: Jassiben, a self-employed potter from Nana Shahpur village in western India, loves summer despite the heat waves and frequent power cuts, because summer days always mean great business. "Poor people like us do not have refrigerators, so they store drinking water in the earthen pots that keep the water cool," says Jassiben, who uses only one name. "This year, the demand has been so high, I am selling at least...