Twenty-two newbie managers, fresh from B-schools across India, are raring to go. Only, they won’t make spreadsheets to sell soaps or fizzy drinks. From June, they will assist senior bureaucrats across 11 districts of Jharkhand where the Centre is funding uplift schemes. These managers — from IIT-Kharagpur, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)-Mumbai, Visva-Bharti in Bengal’s Santiniketan, XISS-Ranchi, XLRI-Jamshedpur and others — are Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellows in some of...

With the elderly likely to constitute a quarter of India's population by 2050, there is need for a publicly-funded, universal scheme that will overcome destitution among the aged India's social security system is woefully inadequate, when compared even to those in third world economies with no higher per capita incomes. Some States in India have fairly comprehensive social security schemes — notably Kerala, also West Bengal and Tamil Nadu — but...

A campaign to help the elderly spend the evening of their lives with dignity and without want is being launched by Pension Parishad with a dharna in Delhi from May 7th to May 11th 2012 at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi. The idea is straight and simple, and is something whose time has come. Just read on and reach the venue for more information and interviews with the campaign participants.   “One...

The Supreme Court has taken steps to lay down a code for media reporting. This attempt at prior restraint on the media is a dangerous move with precedent from authoritarian polities. In a context where the judiciary has been lax in defending the media from attacks which seek to curb its freedom, such unilateral moves will not remedy bad reporting but rather make conditions worse for the media to play...

India joins global drug discovery league The launch by Ranbaxy last week of Synriam, a new drug to treat malaria, is an important milestone. Having made its name by manufacturing generic (off patent) drugs cheaply, India’s pharmaceutical industry has struggled to achieve original drug discovery since the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations signalled the onset of product patents in India. It began to be realised, in time, that there was...