-The Hindu Health protection scheme for 10.74 crore beneficiary families and 50 crore Indian citizens The healthcare sector has welcomed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement in his Independence Day address that the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Abhiyaan, also known as Ayushman Bharat or the National Health Protection Mission (AB-NHPM), will be launched on September 25. The government-sponsored health insurance scheme will provide free coverage of up to ?5 lakh a family a year...

-TheStatesman.com Vijay Jardhari, who started the ‘Beej Bachao Andolan’ Uttarakhand in 1986 along with fellow farmers, has dedicated his life to conserving traditional seeds, which otherwise would have disappeared due to wide acceptability of hybrid seeds among farmers Dehradun: Flashback 1986: Whenever farmer and social activist Vijay Jardhari and his friends would visit any village telling locals to conserve their traditional seeds and to continue consuming millets, people would make fun of...

-IndiaSpend New Delhi: On July 27, 2018, Rajendra Birhor, a 40-year-old Adivasi, starved to death in Ramgarh, a district in eastern Jharkhand. He belonged to a “particularly vulnerable tribal group” (PVTG) and should have had access to at least two welfare measures that could have saved his life: A pension and a ration card. Like him, 13 others died of starvation in Jharkhand over the last 10 months, according to the latest...

-The Hindu Business Line By converting a necessity into a virtue, the government has decided to release the large inventory of procured pulses to different States at a discounted rate for utilisation in various welfare programs. Necessity because the stocks continue to occupy scarce warehousing space and incur huge carrying costs. Also, the Centre thinks, warehousing space may be needed during the upcoming kharif harvest less than six weeks away; and of course,...

-PTI Many of Jharkhand's immigrant women labourers are lured by touts into becoming domestic workers in cities and are often reduced to bonded labourers. KHUNTI: Her eyes sunk deep in their sockets, Suggi Mundain stares blankly at the wall of her bare-bones hut, her vacant gaze speaking of a once happy family torn apart by grinding poverty, and telling a societal tale of migration and exploitation. The 60-year-old, her face wrinkled beyond her...