Plagued by power shortage but determined to find a way out, 10 villages in Karnataka have switched to solar power. Kerosene lamps and ‘chullahs’ are now things of the past. Anitha Pailoor documents this journey from darkness to light.d to light It’s half past eight in a tiny village called Neeralakatti, 15 km from Dharwad where Mangala is sitting at home, busy grading farm-picked brinjals as she has to send...

Continuing with the “well-entrenched trend of corruption and mismanagement” in foodgrain procurement and storage, the food bowl of India- Punjab - this year, too, procured wheat that was highly substandard and damaged. This has been admitted by none other than Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, who recently said in Parliament that as many as 244 bags of wheat procured by Punjab State Civil Supplies Corporation (PUNSUP) on behalf of the Food Corporation...

School vouchers should be an integral part of the Centre’s plans to implement the Right to Education (RTE). For the state to spend gargantuan amounts on school education is fine, but to insist that the delivery too would be by the state is meaningless. Surveys have shown that government teachers are absent from their schools and children cannot do simple arithmetic or write small paragraphs after years of schooling. Reforms...

Uttar Pradesh has another reason to hang its head in shame. In the latest survey report released by the ministry of health, under the National Rural Health Mission, UP has been ranked the lowest among all states, with a shortfall of over 5800 rural healthcare centres. According to the data, while states like Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir have bettered their performances in the rural health sector --...

Acting with determination and firm action, it should be possible for India to step up its agricultural growth rate to 10 per cent. The 11th Five Year Plan seeks to achieve 4 per cent growth rate in agriculture by the end of the Plan period. The Planning Commission is working towards an overall 9 per cent to 10 per cent growth rate. But the target of 4 per cent growth rate is...