-The Business Standard   A seven-point agenda to fix India's public services, and overcome poorly designed systems India's Achilles Heel remains its inability to deliver public services. India's aspiration to be a global economic power will be unrealised if this remains unsolved. Why is this problem so particularly acute? Is it political interference and corruption, poorly designed programmes and weak administration? Or a much deeper cultural problem of aversion to collective action, often...

-The Hindustan Times   Like all other children, 11-year-old Gayatri Kachari loves playing. And if play involves Water, she loves it even more. For many children at Sajjanpara Lower Primary School in Assam's Kamrup district, the three minutes spent washing their hands as a group before their mid-day meal is the highlight of the day. The children cheerfully sing the "Hand Washing song" as they scrub their hands under running Water...

-PTI   The report said conditions in displacement camps remain dire across the country The United Nations: India at the end of last year had about 526,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), uprooted from their homes due to communal violence and armed conflict, according to a new UN-backed report.   "India continued to experience new and protracted displacement during 2013 as a result of communal violence and armed conflict with a total of at least 526,000...

-The United Nations   People everywhere are living longer, the United Nations health agency today reported, mostly because fewer children are dying, certain diseases are in check, and tobacco use is down, but conditions in low-income countries continue to plague life quality there. According to the UN World Health Organization's (WHO) World Health Statistics 2014, a girl born in 2012 can expect to live around 73 years and a boy to the...

-Financial Chronicle   Forecasts on possible monsoon behaviour are not very encouraging. There is a possibility of El Nino factors causing further problems. More recently, our farmers in parts of north and central India experienced the fury of hailstorms and heavy rains. Climate change further complicates the possibility of providing accurate advance estimates of monsoon behaviour. This is not only true in our country, but also around the world. California, for example,...