Of Indian households’ total annual income, 0.22 per cent is spent on buying newspapers — that is, if total national household annual income was Rs 100, 22 paise would be set aside for newspapers. Paying off bank loans (expenditure under equated monthly instalments) takes up 1.4 per cent of total household annual income. The share of health expenditure is 1.5 per cent, and that of education expenditure, 3.21 per cent....

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With the problem of climate change now turning into an increasing reality, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) is working on the development of a model that can forecast the subtleties of the phenomenon with a fair degree of accuracy into the next five or 10 years, according to Secretary to the Ministry of Earth Sciences Shailesh Naik. Addressing a session on ‘Science Programme for the Country,’at the 97th Indian...

TIRUNELVELI: For the first time in the State, the Indian Red Cross Society’s Tirunelveli chapter has kicked off a novel initiative of collecting unused medicines from the public, segregating and stocking it in a pharmacy to be given strictly to the poor patients carrying prescriptions given by a qualified doctor. After seeing a sizable quantity of valuable drugs remain unused in the shelves of his house and of his friends,’ the...

The first meeting of the Group of Ministers (GoM) to consider two bills on educational reforms will be held on January 6. The GoM, chaired by Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, will consider the bills — one to provide for establishment of educational tribunals and another to provide for prohibition and punishment for adoption of unfair practices in technical educational Institutions and universities. The Educational Tribunals Bill and the Prohibition of...

Insufficiency and prescribing medicines from outside continues  CRM draws attention to ‘irrational’ use and non-availability of essential medicines Supplies are mostly top-down, based on availability instead of being demand-based No State provides free medicines to below the poverty line (BPL) patients under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). “The insufficiency of drugs and thereby the imperative of prescribing medicines from outside continue widely. This could also be linked to insufficiency of understanding...