-IPS News NAGAPATNAM, India - Standing amidst his lush green paddy fields in Nagapatnam, a coastal district in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a farmer named Ramajayam remembers how a single wave changed his entire life. The simple farmer was one of thousands whose agricultural lands were destroyed by the 2004 Asian tsunami, as massive volumes of saltwater and metre-high piles of sea slush inundated these fertile fields in the...
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Modi office sits on RTI chief selection -Ananya Sengupta
-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Central Information Commission (CIC) has been headless for the past five months, spawning an unprecedented backlog of applications and fears the delay could sound the "death knell" for transparency. Over 200 people - other commission members and retired bureaucrats - are vying to become the chief information commissioner, according to activist Lokesh Batra who had filed a plea on the matter under the Right to Information Act...
More »India slashes health budget by almost 20%
-Reuters The government has ordered a cut of nearly 20% in its 2014-15 healthcare budget due to fiscal strains, putting at risk key disease control initiatives in a country whose public spending on health is already among the lowest in the world. Two health ministry officials told Reuters on Tuesday that more than 60 billion rupees, or $948 million, has been slashed from their budget allocation of around $5 billion for the...
More »India to reach replacement levels of fertility by 2020 -Rukmini S
-The Hindu Total fertility rate in 8 States below 2 children per woman Fertility is falling faster than expected in India, and the country is on track to reach replacement levels of fertility as soon as 2020, new official data shows. The 2013 data for the Sample Registration Survey (SRS), conducted by the Registrar General of India, the country's official source of birth and death data, was released on Monday. The SRS shows that...
More »Learning from the Ernakulam experiment -S Krishna Kumar
-The Hindu Other States in India can study how the family planning programme has worked in Kerala and incorporate those features in their own programmes The recent tragedy of several women losing their lives in the state-sponsored tubectomy camp in Takhatpur, Chhattisgarh, has caused severe damage to the national family planning programme. This, however, is not an invalidation of the importance of sterilisation as an integral part of the programme, but only...
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