-The Business Standard Make schemes mobile and portable, by focusing on people and not products India spends close to four per cent of its GDP on an alphabet soup of welfare schemes and subsidies - it has become a welfare state before becoming a developed state. Despite its significant costs, India's welfare system is neither comprehensive nor very effective - subject to huge leakages and corruption, and not well knit into...

-Down to Earth Infrastructure for primary healthcare has decreased in the past decade As India moves towards the goal of universal health coverage (UHC), its inadequate health infrastructure is going to pose major problems. In the past few years, the percentage of shortfall in basic infrastructure has increased, instead of declining, says a report released Thursday. Despite massive spending under the National Rural Health Mission, the shortfall in sub-centres increased by...

-The Hindu Business Line Ahmedabad: As nearly 40,000 citizens signed a petition asking tea companies to clean up chai, The Wagh Bakri Group, India's third largest tea packager, on Thursday said it would support Greenpeace's attempts to eliminate pesticides from tea cultivation in the country. Wagh Bakri has engaged with Greenpeace India whose report "Trouble Brewing" and highlighted pesticide residue in tea samples recently. Hindustan Unilever Ltd and Girnar Tea have already announced...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: After deregulating vegetables last month, Delhi government has now proposed to deregulate khoya and fodder mandis. Both wholesale markets have been suffering losses for the past several years and officials said, with rapid urbanization of Delhi, there is no large-scale farming or dairy activity within the city to sustain them. The wholesale fodder market is located in Mangolpuri's Tikri Kalam area. V P Rao, special secretary...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Faced with the scary prospect of losing lives to simple infections in the future, India is finally waking up to the dangers of reckless antibiotic use. The Indian Medical Association, a pan-India voluntary organization of doctors, will on Sunday launch a nationwide awareness programme on overuse of these live-savers, a practice that has led to emergence of drug-resistant organisms. IMA will also ask fellow practitioners to...