That hospital births curb mother and child deaths is probably a no brainer. Convincing expectant mothers to get admitted to a hospital is only part of the problem in India’s rural healthcare system. The other challenge is abysmal infrastructure: There is just one hospital bed for every 10,000 Indians living in villages and one in 10 primary health centres in rural areas stumble along without doctors. The result is a human tragedy....

While India’s new Right to Education Act seeks to bring free and compulsory education for all children, it seems to short-change them through an unrealistic vision of the private sector’s involvement. In August 2009, the Right to Education Act was passed in the Indian Parliament with no debate, by the fewer than 60 members who happened to be attending the session that day. Not that the Act was an open-and-shut...

India’s plan to offer unique identity (UID) cards to all citizens will bring a range of banking services within reach of millions of poor who currently cannot even open a bank account, says a report released on Friday by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which is executing the project. Facilities such as microfinance are beyond the reach of many poor people in both towns and villages who do not...

INSIDE his hovel of branches and rags, a grizzled pauper called Badshah Kale keeps a precious object. It is a note, scrawled by a policeman and framed by Mr Kale, proclaiming that he “is not a thief”. For members of his Pardhi tribe, who are among some 60m Indians considered criminal by tradition, this is treasure. Squatting beside Mr Kale, on a turd-strewn wasteland outside Ashti, a village in India’s western...

Around 49,000 complaints were received against policemen across the country in a year, but 60 per cent of them were declared "false or unsubstantiated" by investigators, according to latest government statistics. Madhya Pradesh and Delhi have received the largest number of complaints accounting for 50 per cent of the total 48,939 cases in 2008. According to the report prepared by National Crime Records Bureau, Madhya Pradesh accounted for 35.8 per...