Even at this rate India might fail to meet the millennium development goal on sanitation In April last year when a UN report said more Indians had mobile phones than toilets, it pointed to a major miss in the millennium development goal on access to sanitation in the country. The message was clear at the South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN), the highest inter-governmental forum to discuss sanitation in the subcontinent,...

The government may approve acquisitions of local drugmakers by global firms on a case-by-case basis on certain conditions to ensure availability of medicines at affordable prices, despite calls for restrictions on such deals in the wake of a spate of takeovers in the last three years. Multinationals may have to move buyout proposals through the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), allowing the government to understand the firm's rationale for buying a...

Government to promote its use to tackle anaemia Food Department to examine the possibility of supplying DFS through PDS Ministries of Women and Child Development and Health to launch media campaign The Union government will promote the use of iron fortified iodised salt (double fortified salt) to battle anaemia, one of the major causes of malnutrition, particularly among women and children. To begin with, the Ministries dealing with food and nutrition programmes such as...

Taking on board citizens' concerns over corruption and quality of governance, the 12th Five Year Plan proposes re-designing of government programmes even as it targets 9-9.5% economic growth with focus on health and education. Aiming at 100% adult literacy, the next Plan (2012-17) proposes to increase expenditure on health from 1.3% to at least 2-2.5% of GDP. The full Planning Commission meeting today presided over by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was given...

700 million Indians have cell phones, but 638 million still don’t have access to proper sanitation. At this year’s South Asian Conference on Sanitation, social solutions to the problem were discussed, including “naming and shaming” and the CLTS programme which gets villagers to map the open areas where they defecate There can hardly be a bigger taboo than sanitation when it comes to the government, bureaucracy or even the people...