Chief minister Arjun Munda plans to hold cabinet meetings in the districts in a bid to bring about transparency in governance. “We’ll start holding cabinet meetings in all the districts of Jharkhand, including the remote ones, after the budget session,” the chief minister said, after paying tributes to the martyrs of the 1948 mutiny in Kharsawan, about 55km from Jamshedpur, today. He added that his government would also ensure that officials actively...

NRHM needs to revitalise systems, monitor their functional performance and investigate their impact on the indices of health. The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) was launched in 2005 to bring about a dramatic improvement in the health system and health status of people in rural India. It seeks to provide universal access to health care, which is affordable, equitable, and of good quality. It aims at making architectural corrections to basic...

Panel report says this would increase soil productivity. In an effort to revolutionise sale of nutrient-based fertilisers, the ministry of agriculture for the first time is considering a proposal to introduce liquid fertilisers. This is based on the recommendation of a working group set up to study and recommend measures to increase agricultural production. Their report says micro irrigation can be combined with controlled application of fertilisers and other needed nutrients. To...

It is time for India's government to put its money where its mouth is. New Delhi has raised some $30 billion since March by selling state assets and telecom airwaves. That is about as much as the country will attract in foreign direct investment this fiscal year. There is one area above all else where this money should be directed: food security. New Delhi talks a lot about guaranteeing food for India's...

How many spelling mistakes can you expect in a school textbook supposedly prepared by a body of experts and released to the students after several rounds of revision? If you go through a computer textbook, provided under the Rajiv Gandhi Computer Literacy Programme and being read by thousands of students in the government schools of Assam, you will find an average of six to 12 mistakes on a page. These books, written...