-PTI Kanpur: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will unveil tomorrow a clutch of skill development initiatives aimed at skilling unemployed youth and also lay the foundation stone for the Indian Institute of Skills in Kanpur. “Apart from launching 31 Kaushal Kendras which will serve as skilling centres and target mainly unemployed youth for training purposes, the Prime Minister will also inaugurate an exhibition named Kaushal Mahotsav,” a senior official in the Ministry of...

-PTI New Delhi: The Centre’s attention has been sought on the “rising neonatal mortality rate” among tribals in Kerala. C K Janu, leader of NDA ally Janadhipathya Rashtriya Sabha (JRS), today met Union Health and Family Welfare minister Jagat Prakash Nadda in this regard. The tribal leader told reporters that the minister agreed to send a central team in a week’s time to study the current situation of tribal children and their health. “We...

-TheWire.in Swayam Shikshan Prayog, a Maharashtra-based non-profit, is helping women become clean energy pioneers, in an initiative that has earned them a UN climate award. Varsha Pawar of Osmanabad district in Maharashtra was like any other housewife till she started selling solar cook stoves and lamps in her neighbourhood a little over a year ago. Life was never the same again. Today, she is the sarpanch (village council chief) of Tirth Khurd,...

-The Indian Express Decentralised industrialisation, entrepreneurship from below have been absent in states that have seen recent unrest among agrarian communities. “The soil here is very saline with electrical conductivity value of 9. We can grow only chloride-loving crops like coconut and the MR-2 variety of mulberry.” That was Tamil Selvi, recently telling this correspondent about the 5.75-acre land farmed by her father Natarajan Gounder at Velayuthagoundanpudur, a small village around 25...

-Bloomberg When farmers in the scorched village of Horti in Western India were struggling to raise money for a canal, they turned to an unlikely source: a crowdfunding website called FuelADream. The farmers had never heard of crowdfunding before, but a local non-profit group suggested the site and helped them write a proposal that explained how a canal would help feed local families. Within weeks, they had raised Rs 300,000 ($4,490) from...