-The Hindustan Times India's record, when it comes to sanitation, has been most unsanitary. Of the estimated billion people who defecate in the open across the world, more than half are here. Poor sanitation impairs the health of Indians, leading to high rates of malnutrition and productivity losses. According to the World Bank, India's sanitation deficit leads to losses worth 6% of GDP. In such a scenario, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Rural women go the extra mile in walk for water
-The Hindustan Times Every second woman in rural India walked an average 173 kilometres - the distance between Delhi and Vrindavan - to fetch potable water in 2012, making her trek 25 kilometres longer than what it was in 2008-09. Data released this week by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), a ministry of statistics and programme implementation wing, gives two broad hints when compared with previous studies: economic...
More »Less than 500 days left, can India meet its MDG targets? -Kundan Pandey
-Down to Earth Going by current trends, the target for reducing infant mortality and improving other human development indices seem near impossible to achieve Less that 500 days are left for nations to achieve the targets set under the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); there are eight such goals which range from halving extreme poverty rates to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education. The countdown for the deadline...
More »Rising burden of out-of-pocket health expenditure
A recent study published in the prestigious science journal 'PLOS One' (August 2014) shows that Central programmes like National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), and state-level initiatives like Yeshasvini health insurance scheme (Karnataka), Vajpayee Aarogyasri health insurance scheme (Karnataka), Rajiv Aarogyasri scheme (Andhra Pradesh), Chief Minister's Insurance Scheme for Life Saving Treatment (Tamil Nadu) etc. did little to reduce the financial burden arising out of...
More »Dalits and nutrition: Where is the catch up? -Biraj Swain
-Down to Earth Blog The performance of nutrition indicators amongst Dalits is improving, it is nowhere near the catch-up pace Does a new government and a strong Prime Minister claiming to hail from the backward caste augur Achche Din for Dalits too? We hope so! But political commitment-or lack of it-has multiple manifestations. In a deeply stratified society like India with entrenched elitism, people from the Scheduled Caste (referred to as Dalits...
More »