-Outlook Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh today said public health system in the country had "collapsed", noting that even poorer countries like Bangladesh and Kenya have superior health indicators. In a candid assessment of the country's health sector, Ramesh also said 70 per cent of the health expenditure is met from private sources, making it a "unique" country. This was the "single most important" reason for indebtedness in rural areas, he...

-Frontline There are no effective vaccines against Japanese encephalitis, but its spread can be controlled in India through vector management.  JAPANESE ENCEPHALITIS, or JE, has become endemic in many parts of the country, occurring repeatedly in epidemic form in many of them—for instance, in parts of Gorakhpur in northern Uttar Pradesh. One can expect JE-type epidemics year after year in States where prolonged drought-like conditions are followed by heavy monsoons. This leads to...

-The Hindustan Times India's ailing economy has found a new scapegoat - environment and forests. For most things that go wrong these days, from power shortage to slow growth, the blame is tossed at the door of the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF), the paradigm being that forests, wildlife and green laws are hurdles to development. So much so, that a Group of Ministers established to 'rationalise' coal mining in forests...

-Outlook The aim of achieving food security across the globe will become increasingly elusive unless countries take into account the planet's nature-based services into agricultural and related planning, said a report released by the United Nations Environment Programme today. Safeguarding the underlying ecological foundations that support food production, including biodiversity will be central if the world is to feed the seven billion people, climbing to over nine billion by 2050, according to...

-The United Nations Amid economic crises, climatic shocks, and high and volatile food prices in a world of plenty where nearly 870 million people still go hungry, the United Nations today marked World Food Day by highlighting agricultural cooperatives as vital weapon in the war on poverty and hunger. “Owned by their members, they can generate employment, alleviate poverty, and empower poor and marginalized groups in rural areas, especially women, to drive...