-The Hindu The unorganised manufacturing sector should be reoriented towards non-household units to provide efficiency gains. Ever since E.F. Schumacher, a British economist, published in 1973 his book Small is Beautiful, implying that small units are better in terms of performance indicators and labour absorption, several studies have endorsed the same idea and argued in favour of promoting small units. Stretching the argument a little further, it may be emphasised that small...

-Bloomberg At the heart of the problem is the way informal businesses like the Varanasi weavers make payments. Varanasi: In Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s political base of Varanasi, Hinduism’s holiest city, weaver Zainul Abedin stares at the uneven mud floor of his home. Behind him, more than a dozen handlooms lie idle. Abedin is part of the collateral damage of Modi’s Nov. 8 decision to ban high-value currency notes, effectively cancelling...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Premature deaths from kidney failure rose in India by about 38 per cent over the past decade, doctors said in a research study released on Tuesday that attributes this trend primarily to untreated or Poorly managed diabetes. The study, based on an analysis of deaths in over a million households across the country, has found that kidney failure increased to 2.9 per cent of the tracked deaths between...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Faculty and scholars from some of India's leading science and engineering institutions have published academic papers in so-called "predatory journals" - online publications that accept Poor-quality papers without adequate peer review, an analysis has found. The finding reflects what some scientists say is a lack of institutional initiatives to curb Poor-quality or junk research. The analysis of 3,300 academic papers from India in predatory journals has found that while...

-The Hindu While hypertension and cardiovascular disease are significantly associated with increased risk of renal failure deaths, diabetes is the leading factor Deaths from renal failure among Indian adults now outstrip deaths from HIV/AIDS, signalling a major shift in causes of mortality in the country over the past decade — away from infectious disease causes to non-communicable disease causes. These are the results of a study published recently in The Lancet. As per...