-The Hindu Business Line Health-conscious consumers, value-added products seen boosting consumption Bengaluru: Apart from the rising awareness of nutritive benefits, the policy push being given by Karnataka – the largest ragi producing State – is set to see the acreage under finger millet (ragi) grow considerably in the years to come. Higher MSP The Karnataka government has procured over one lakh tonnes of ragi at ₹2,000 a quintal last year (includes a bonus of...

-PTI Regional political parties like DMK, NCP, Shiv Sena were more active in asking health and population related questions in both the Houses of Parliament as compared to two national parties - the Congress and BJP in last two years, a recent analysis has found. The report was released by Indian Association of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (IAPPD) which conducted a comparative analysis of Parliament questions on health and population for...

-The Indian Express SECC opens the door to step away from the poverty line as a criterion for government benefits. The Government of India has just released data from the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011. It is perhaps the most ambitious exercise of this kind ever conducted in human history. The SECC 2011 has three parts: census of rural India, conducted by the Union ministry of rural Development (MoRD), census...

-Scroll.in Thanks to the law, workers have built roads where there were none, replaced scrublands with forests, levelled lands and made them cultivable. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act envisages that the works undertaken under it will strengthen natural resource management and address causes of chronic poverty like drought, deforestation and soil erosion, thereby encouraging sustainable Development. However, the fact that it is not simply a work creation programme but...

-The Hindu Urban planning that involves the people and alternative service providers gives far better results than top-down efforts from the government, finds an IIT-M study In Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, the responsibility of managing and maintaining a set of more than 160 community toilets was handed over by the Tiruchirapalli City Corporation to a federation of women self-help groups. A post-programme field survey of 803 households revealed that the community participation had...