-Pragativadi The extent of the poverty in southern and northern region of Odisha is still high and remains a matter of concern even as the poverty percentage points reduced to 29.69 per cent.  According to the Odisha Economic Survey, 2011-12 report, even after sixty-four years of independence, Odisha has witnessed wide regional and social disparities in development. All regions have not developed uniformly so far. The annual report, which was circulated in the...

No one will deny that the least a democratic government can do for its people in a civilised society is to ensure access to food at affordable prices. Ensuring food security is, therefore, a fundamental responsibility of the state. Public distribution system (PDS) is the instrument through which food grains are made available to targeted beneficiaries. Government's resolve to provide for food security is laudable.  At the same time, it does...

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is likely to run into a debate on public health policy after the Planning Commission moved to nix a proposal to include healthcare in the list of public entitlements such as education and food. Central to the proposal—initiated by a high-level expert group (HLEG) headed by K. Srinath Reddy, a leading advocate of preventive cardiology and president of the Public Health Foundation of India—was the...

India is lagging in its effort to reach United Nations goals to reduce poverty and improve health and sanitation, but has shown significant progress boosting education, treating AIDS and addressing environmental concerns, a U.N. official said. “We are in a race against time with just three years left” to achieve Millennium Development Goals, Noeleen Heyzer, executive secretary of the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, said last...

-The Times of India   Can Jairam Ramesh become the next president of the World Bank? Unlikely, but in the steady drumbeat of the demand that the next World Bank president must come from the developing world, the rural development minister’s name is being heard alongside several other competent names from the wrong side of the poverty divide.    An independent website, worldbankpresident.org, which is running a poll on who should be the next...