-Scroll.in A scheme to give India’s Poor people free power connections has been in operation since 2005. But the capacity to provide 24x7 power is still a dream. On Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the “Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana” or the Saubhagya scheme to provide electricity connections to Indians who do not have them. “The government will connect each house, whether it is in village, a city or...

-The Hindu Over the years we have lost over a lakh varieties of native rice. One district in Odisha is rediscovering some of them It is a balmy winter morning when I meet Kamli Bataraa, an ebullient Adivasi farmer, at her home in Belugan, in southern Odisha’s Koraput district. There is a hum across the village from the threshing of just-harvested paddy. When I ask Kamli about the rice varieties she grows,...

-Factchecker.in With a score of 38.6 out of 100, India’s performance on health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Index is the worst among BRICS nations. SDGs are universal targets including ending poverty, hunger and inequality, improving access to health and education among others for all countries by 2030. Created by the international research collaboration Global Burden of Disease, the SDG index calculates the performance of countries on 37 health-related targets of SDGs including under-five...

-The Indian Express In zones of prosperity, agriculture faces crisis, jobs are few, social aspirations don’t match economic realities After Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, farmers from Rajasthan came out on the streets demanding loan waiver and implementation of the Swaminathan Committee report. Protesting against government policies and demanding their share in the country’s development, which they argue have been denied to them, the farmers have shown unity across caste and class lines....

-TheWire.in Diane Coffey and Dean Spears’ Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development and the Costs of Caste is a path breaking addition to the literature on child malnutrition and development policy in India. The history of global health has been marked with a dramatic turnaround starting from around the mid to late 19th century. This period witnessed an unprecedented decline in death rate and a steady increase in the life expectancy...