-The Business Standard Social attitudes as important as money It is appropriate to use Gandhi Jayanti to launch a fresh campaign, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, to end open defecation, a goal that has eluded three previous missions spanning decades. It is vitally important to address the question of sanitation as Gandhi had - as a question of social reform, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's appeal that government officials set an example is valuable....

-The Indian Express The government at the Centre may have changed, but the performance of the flagship rural job guarantee scheme continues to remain dismal, with households not getting work for even one third of the mandated 100 days (annually) on an average so far this year. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), introduced in February 2006, promises 100 days of employment every year to each rural household. A...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: In the Indian pool of heart patients, almost every second patient has high blood pressure, every fourth has diabetes and every fifth had plaque deposits in his/her arteries. This scientific picture of Indian heart diseases, at a time when prime minister Narendra Modi tours the US, comes from the American College of Cardiology's newly set up study centres across India. ACC is a not-for-profit medical association that...

-The Indian Express The government is aiming to lend Rs 165,000 crore to the poor and unbanked population through the overdraft facility at an interest rate of 11 per cent under its ongoing Jan Dhan financial inclusion programme. "It is estimated that there are 18.2 crore basic banking accounts and. by the end of the campaign another 15 crore accounts would get added. An overdraft of Rs 5,000 in each of these...

-The Hindu Business Line   Opening bank accounts in rural areas is all very well, but biometric frauds are a serious possibility The ambitious Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) aims at bringing millions of Rural Indians within the financial mainstream by opening bank accounts. In 2006, the Reserve of India, recognising that a majority of Rural Indians had little or no access to banking services, allowed banks to use third-party, non-bank agents...