-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The health ministry has chalked out an overarching National Multi-Sectoral Action Plan with the aim to reduce premature deaths from cancer, diabetes and heart diseases by 25% in the next 10 years (by 2025). The plan, which includes initiatives and measures from at least 27 government departments including ministries like environment, women and child development, urban development, industries etc, is in the final stage and...

Although there is sufficient data and evidence available in the public domain to argue whether there has been halving of poverty between 1990 and 2015, the same cannot be said with conviction about the halving of hunger—one of the targets set under the erstwhile Millennium Development Goals framework (replaced recently by SDGs). This is because the recently released data by the National Family Health Survey-4 (conducted in 2015-16) and the...

-The Hindu Business Line The absence of a strong framework can hold up productivity improvements. But GEAC is better than having no regulator at all The clamour for the state to regulate (as against the powers of the legally mandated regulatory agency), field trials of bio-technology seeds for cotton and then mustard, is truly extraordinary. It has serious long-term consequences for the economy. The challenges to the Genetic Engineering Advisory Council’s powers to regulate the...

-PTI The upcoming Budget will be citizen-centric with a focus on farm sector, job creation and eradication of poverty, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said today. The upcoming Budget will be citizen-centric with a focus on farm sector, job creation and eradication of poverty, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said today. This will be the second full-fledged Budget of the ruling NDA government, and will be unveiled in Parliament...

-The Hindu It is only due to the high rates of growth in the services sector that India’s overall economic growth appears robust. The world economy is so hard to predict. In 2008, as the global financial markets plunged into a crisis, high oil prices were considered to be one of the factors that caused it. Today, many fear that the world economy is on the edge of another recession. Guess what...