A rural Indian spending Rs. 22.50 a day would not be considered poor by a Planning Commission whose Deputy Chairman's foreign trips between May and October last year cost a daily average of Rs. 2.02 lakh Pranab Mukherjee's stirring call for austerity tugs at the national tear ducts. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has pleaded for it in the past and watched his flock embrace it creatively. With the Finance Ministry even...

Health activists say new policy may not address the weaknesses in ongoing routine immunisation programmes and would flood poor countries with new vaccines When the global health leaders meet in Geneva from May 21 to 26 for the World Health Organization's 65th General Assembly, introducing new vaccines in the low- and middle-income countries would be high on their agenda. A “global draft vaccine action plan”, available on WHO's website, details the implementation...

-PTI Retail inflation shot up to the double digit mark at 10.32 per cent in April on account of substantial increase in vegetable, edible oils and milk prices. Based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the inflation for March was revised to 9.38 per cent from the provisional estimate of 9.47 per cent, as per the government data release here on Friday. Vegetable prices recorded the maximum of 24.55 per cent, followed by...

What stops the government from using good harvests to reduce, if not eliminate, hunger? For ordinary folk, a 3 per cent increase in food grain production over that of last year, combined with strong procurement operations and good buffer stocks of rice and wheat would be a cause for some celebration. It would be seen as an opportunity to tackle the widespread food insecurity that exists in India today. Instead, we...

SANGLI/ SATARA: Open trailers packed with families and cattle have become a common sight along Maharashtra's highways - a telling sign of the distress the drought in 15 districts of the state has brought with it. Truckloads of villagers are migrating from the hinterland to cities like Mumbai, Pune and Kolhapur in desperate search for livelihood. While many officials deny the drought-driven migration, the absence of male heads in rural homes...