-IPS News SUNDARBANS: November is the cruelest month for landless families in the Indian Sundarbans, the largest single block of tidal mangrove forest in the world lying primarily in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. There is little agricultural wage-work to be found, and the village moneylender's loan remains unpaid, its interest mounting. The paddy harvest is a month away, pushing rice prices to an annual high. For those like Namita Bera,...

-The Hindu The government must recognise the role low-cost health IT innovations could play in improving diagnostic accuracy, including many that would be useful for rural India The diagnosis of the first patient with Ebola in the U.S. was initially missed in an emergency room late night on September 25. Thomas Duncan, a Liberian national visiting Dallas, Texas, complained of flu-like symptoms and fever, but after lab work and CT scans, was...

-The Economic Times For one who had worked so closely to frame the world's largest job guarantee programme, known as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, it's not easy to see it succumb to pressure. It's no wonder that economist-cum-activist Jean Dreze will raise his voice against this, along with eminent academics such as Pranab Bardhan and Maitreesh Ghatak. Dreze says corruption related to NREGA and leakages - its...

-The Hindu Business Line Output data is unreliable, which leaves us unprepared for shortages. And, farming practices are primitive The price of potatoes is once again moving up, largely due to the demand-supply gap in the market-place. The National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (Nafed) that was asked by the Ministry of Civil Supplies to explore the possibility of importing potatoes from Russia, China and Egypt, procured 3,500 tonnes of potatoes...

-BBC Most parents would love to get their teenagers away from computers. But not in one poor suburb on the outskirts of Delhi, where youngsters are sent to learn. Sharing a few laptops between them, they're being taught some basic online skills - how to search for information, how to send money to their families in the villages and how to book train tickets. None of the children have access to computers in school....