While Indian psychiatrists have rejected a World Health Organisation (WHO) study portraying India as the depression capital of the world, they say it has indirectly drawn attention to an acute shortage of trained personnel and facilities to deal with mental illness. "Declaring India as having the highest rate of major depression in the world is an aberration in interpretation," Dr. Roy Abraham Kallivayalil, secretary-general of the World Association of Social Psychiatry,...

The Centre’s flagship welfare plan has failed to turn the tide on a key problem: rural migration. The disconcerting admission about the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, or MNREGA, came in a paper released today by Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh on the main challenges facing the programme and the reforms required. Checking distress migration is a key objective of the scheme, other than providing at least 100 days...

Ankaji Bhai Gangar, a 49-year-old subsistence farmer, stood in line in this remote village until, for the first time in his life, he squinted into the soft glow of a computer screen. His name, year of birth and address were recorded. A worker guided Mr. Gangar’s rough fingers to the glowing green surface of a scanner to record his fingerprints. He peered into an iris scanner shaped like binoculars that...

Bringing an aggressive outlook to the ministry of rural development, Jairam Ramesh, who took charge of the portfolio in July, has attempted to address and fast-track contentious issues such as the proposed land acquisition legislation and the census for identifying households below the poverty line (BPL). Ramesh spoke in an interview about his blueprint for the ministry and revisiting controversial elements, including identifying the poor and poverty caps imposed by...

Last week, the census commissioner released the second round of data, which showed that the move towards towns and cities received a fresh impetus in the decade ended 2011, as a result of which the country achieved a laudable milestone: a little under one in three Indians now lives in areas classified as urban, reversing a lull apparent in the previous two decades. This is something to be welcomed as in...