-The Business Standard   A seven-point agenda to fix India's public services, and overcome poorly designed systems India's Achilles Heel remains its inability to deliver public services. India's aspiration to be a global economic power will be unrealised if this remains unsolved. Why is this problem so particularly acute? Is it political interference and corruption, poorly designed programmes and weak administration? Or a much deeper cultural problem of aversion to collective action, often...

-The Guardian   Tamil Nadu farmer produces bumper crop four times larger than average using system of rice intensification An Indian farmer has set a state and possibly a national record for growing rice using a neglected method of cultivation that has been dismissed by academic researchers and received little financial backing from agribusiness. According to Jaisingh Gnanadurai, joint director of agriculture in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, farmer S Sethumadhavan from...

-Down to Earth NTFPS-EP is a network working with adivasis on ecosystem conservation, advocacy and livelihoods When we shift the focus from the timber a forest is usually valued for to the non-timber products it offers, a very different world opens up. Wild fruit, honey, gums and resin, fish and crab, fibre and flowers, birds' eggs and bush meat, and medicinal barks are only some of the products that a forest may...

-IANS   India carried the biggest burden of maternal deaths globally, according to a UN report. Seventeen percent or nearly 50,000 of the 2.89 lakh women who died as a result of complications due to pregnancy or childbearing in 2013 were in India, the report said. The report said that 10 countries led by India carry most of the burden at 60 percent of the entire deaths, according to an official release Wednesday. While Nigeria...

-Live Mint   Out-of-pocket payments for health are highest among all WHO regions and one-third of new annual poverty is healthcare related New Delhi: The World Health Organization (WHO) will seek to provide access to health services for all in Southeast Asia and put in place robust healthcare systems in the region, the agency's regional director Poonam Khetrapal Singh said in a speech at a conference on Wednesday in Paro, Bhutan. Public health experts,...