-The Hindu GUDURU (KRISHNA): In Krishna district, considered the rice bowl of Andhra Pradesh, illiterate women leaders of agricultural labourers, engaged in paddy operations, have made a major contribution for better yield. The leader, known as ‘mestri' or ‘crop manager' among the womenfolk, attends the field with a rope in her hands. Having the sufficient number of workers, her duty involves calculation of the quantity of paddy saplings required for transplantation in...

-The Indian Express Rajasthan government's decision to ‘target' free medicines and diagnostics is contrary to the recommended role of government in healthcare. In 2002-03, Abhijit Banerjee, Angus Deaton and Esther Duflo studied health facilities in rural Udaipur, Rajasthan. They found that facilities were poor and absenteeism was rampant. In 2013, we decided to revisit the same public health facilities. The motivation was to study two bold initiatives of the then Ashok Gehlot...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: With all the buzz around double-income power couples, it is easy to believe that more and more urban families have given up the sole breadwinner model of the past. But that would be a mistake, as just released Census 2011 data shows. An overwhelming 51 per cent of urban households live on the income of a single earner, while double-income families are a distant 26 per...

-Mid-Day.com Ganpati travellers' plans went awry as 14 trains on Konkan Railway were cancelled, after seven wagons of a goods train carrying food grain derailed near Karanjadi railway station in Mahad taluka, Raigad district, yesterday Hundreds of tonnes of food grains were strewn across the tracks on Konkan Railway, after a goods train carrying them derailed near Karanjadi railway station early in the morning yesterday. Passengers travelling to their native places in the...

-Outlook More government took Himachal near the top of development indices In the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections, the buzz around the so-called ‘Gujarat model' was such that without really knowing what it stood for, everyone wanted it. ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance' is as close as one could get in terms of concrete proposals. However, when one looks at the achievements of Gujarat, the buzz turns to a whimper (see...