Groundwater, which irrigates half of Indian agriculture and provides 85% of rural drinking consumption, is an increasingly scarce resource. There is a growing understanding that it must be approached as a common property resource for collective benefit. It is best understood and managed by those who live near them and use them rather than agencies who visit sporadically - that is the central premise of efforts around participatory groundwater management....

-The Hindu While the focus is on pilgrims, nobody is talking about the fate of boys and men who came from their villages in the Mandakini valley to earn during the yatri season It is one week since Uttarakhand's worst disaster in living memory. Flash floods resulting from extremely intense rainfall swept away mountainsides, villages and towns, thousands of people, animals, agricultural fields, irrigation canals, domestic water sources, dams, roads, BRIdges, and...

-The Hindu Hassan (Karnataka): Though officials of the departments of Public Instruction, and Women and Child Development may be enthusiastic about setting up pre-primary centres (Makkala Mane) to attract children to government schools, it has attracted the ire of anganwadi workers. With the setting up of these centres, anganwadi workers have to look after lower kindergarten classes aside from implementing the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS). The Makkala Mane centres were set up...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Top-selling blood pressure drugs and antibiotics could become a lot cheaper as the government plans to notify price caps for 51 essential drugs early next week under a new drug price control order that was enforced last month. Under this second lot of notifications by the National Pharma Pricing Authority, the brands selling the most expensive antibiotics would have to cut their prices by 30-60%. For instance, the...

-The Business Standard Bihar's model of health care through mobile phones is finding many takers Many things may be going wrong in India, but the one thing that has gone right is the reach of the mobile phone. It has BRIdged the divide between the rural and the urban areas, the rich and the poor. Governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and phone companies are realising the potential of the mobile phone as a tool...