India will henceforth treat even a single case of polio anywhere in the country as a public health emergency requiring unprecedented rapid response, the health ministry announced today after the longest polio-free period in the country. Health authorities have so far detected a single patient with paralysis caused by the wild polio virus this year ---- from Howrah in Bengal on January 13 ----- according to the latest counts from the...
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Kejriwal shoed in Lucknow, 1 held
-The Hindustan Times A slipper was hurled at Anna Hazare aide Arvind Kejriwal at a function in Lucknow on Tuesday — exactly a week after Prashant Bhushan, another Team Anna member, had been thrashed in his chamber in the Supreme Court for seeking a plebiscite in Kashmir. The black flag-waving, saffron kurta-clad attacker, Jitendra Pathak of Jalaun district in Bundelkhand, about 200 km north of Lucknow, attacked Kejriwal when he was about...
More »UIDAI working under the powers delegated by PM: Nandan Nilekani
-PTI The UIDAI chief Nandan Nilekani today asserted that the authority set up for issuing national identity cards was working under the powers delegated by the Prime Minister. "My powers have been delegated by the Prime minister," Unique Identification Development Authority of India (UIDAI) Chairman Nilekani said when asked whether the authority was on a collision course with the Planning Commission. "We are an attached office of the Planning Commission and by series...
More »People prefer PDS over cash transfers
What is government planning to do with the Public Distribution System (PDS)? The answer lies in an old adage: Give a dog bad name and hang him! The common impression is that the PDS is not working because of pilferage and hence it is taken as a foregone conclusion that it needs to be replaced with cash transfer. Two empirical studies conducted recently, one of them by noted economists Jean Dreze...
More »Dividing the poor by TK Rajalakshmi
The flawed Bill on food security has not received the kind of publicity that the Lokpal Bill has, but that does not diminish its significance. “THIS government has divided everything and everyone. There are different cards for different sections of the poor. If my employer, taking pity on me, gives me an old television, I am not entitled to a yellow card [Below Poverty Line card]. My son who is...
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