KEY TRENDS   • Section 105 of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, which provides for excluding 13 Central legislation, including Land Acquisition (Mines) Act 1885, Atomic Energy Act, 1962, Railway Act 1989, National Highways Act 1956 and Metro Railways (Construction of Works) Act, 1978, from its purview, has been amended for payment of compensation with rigours $ • The amendments have now...

Come October, migrants, believed to be fuelling India's HIV epidemic, will get a quick crash course on safe sex and dangers of risky sexual behaviour, just before they board their TRAIn to large towns and cities in search of work. In what will be one of the most ambitious interventions to combat HIV, the National Aids Control Organisation (Naco) has identified 68 main railway stations in districts across 11 states...

KEY TRENDS   • Maternal Mortality Ratio for India was 370 in 2000, 286 in 2005, 210 in 2010, 158 in 2015 and 145 in 2017. Therefore, the MMRatio for the country decreased by almost 61 percent between 2000 and 2017 *14    • As per the NSS 71st round, among rural females aged 5-29 years, the main reasons for dropping out/ discontinuance were: engagement in domestic activities, not interested in education, financial consTRAInts and marriage. Among rural males aged...

Last week saw the publication by BS Books of the India Health Report 2010 (henceforth referred to as IHR10), edited (and mostly written) by Ajay Mahal, Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari. For anyone interested in India’s health status, access to health care and medicines, emerging health problems, the infrastructure of health services, medical ethics, health-care financing, government programmes and regulations and key issues in health sector reform, this 138-page report...

Farmers are improving crop yields, using new technologies besides learning video-making skills — thanks to Digital Green which is catalysing a quiet revolution in the little hamlets of India. Delhi-based Digital Green focusses on educating farmers about farming techniques through locally produced videos in which local cultivators are featured. The project works in over 200 villages across Jharkhand, Orissa, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh with seven NGOs, helping famers improve their...