A LEAFY VILLAGE in Kerala, Pathanpara, never found access to India’s electricity grid. That is why for the last several years, this village has been generating its own electricity. Raju, a dhoti-clad cashew nut farmer, operates Pathanpara’s five kilowatt (KW) micro hydropower plant. He lives in the village and earns a salary of Rs 2,250, paid by the People’s Electricity Committee (PEC). The power generated is shared equally by the village,...

The government is examining the possibility of turning its two important social sector programmes into universal schemes covering the unorganised sector in phases, taking a cue from the successful extension of a health insurance plan to 23 million poor families. The labour ministry will prepare a feasibility plan together with the rural and finance ministries that run the old age pension scheme for the below poverty line people and the Aam...

One of the least talked about issues in the debate on India's demographic dividend is child malnutrition. India is home to about a third of the world's underweight and stunted children under the age of 5. A child under 5 is almost twice as likely to be chronically underweight in India as in sub-Saharan Africa. Sadly, the impressive economic growth of the past decade has made only a modest dent into...

Patriarchal societies are part of the problem of altered sex ratios, female infanticide and foeticide. This needs to be acknowledged and changed. India's sex ratio, among children aged 0-6 years, is alarming. The ratio has declined from 976 females (for every 1000 males) in 1961 to 914 in 2011. Every national census has documented a decline in the ratio, signalling a ubiquitous trend. Preliminary data from the 2011 census have recorded...

The head of the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) warned today that the “slow-motion catastrophe” of non-communicable diseases could overwhelm even the wealthiest nations if the root causes of the epidemic, mostly lifestyle decisions, are not addressed. Margaret Chan, the WHO Director-General, told delegates at the First Global Ministerial Conference on Healthy Lifestyles and Noncommunicable Disease Control in Moscow that the fact the many of the chronic non-communicable illnesses in...