The accredited social health activists (ASHAs) — the first port of call for health care under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) — will be entrusted with additional responsibilities, albeit with better monetary incentives, as the Mission Steering Group – the highest decision making body of the NRHM — has approved the proposal for involving them in activities such as spacing between births, promoting iodised salt and village sanitation. The ASHAs...

-The Telegraph Indian women living in Canada are more likely to have male babies during their second or third deliveries, according to a new study that hints Indians may have carried the malaise of female foeticide to Canada. Researchers in Canada have found that the male-female ratio of babies born to women from India who already have children is significantly higher than the ratio observed among women from other countries, including Pakistan. Their...

-One World South Asia The World Bank signs an agreement with India to inject $ 352 million into the National Dairy Support Project, an initiative designed to revive the flagging fortunes of milk production in the country. Other than being crucial to the nutritional security of the country’s population; dairy farming or dairying is also a major source of livelihood for 147 million rural households in India. Spurred by the success of the...

BANWARA, India – In the fall of 2006, Gita Devi was pregnant with her sixth child when her family fell on hard times. A severe drought made it more difficult than ever to find farm work here in India’s northeastern plains. The family couldn’t afford food. It was unable to get a government ration card to buy grains and rice at steep discounts, even though it clearly was poor enough to...

HETA, India – At the entrance to this village in India’s eastern state of Jharkhand, a large pond glistened under the bright autumn sun. Yellow and blue lilies surrounded it. A tailor was stitching clothes outside his shop while a few boys nearby were playing carrom on the lid of a rusted oil barrel. It was a tranquil, rustic setting – a candidate for a landscape painting, it seemed. But it...