-Outlook A girl from small-town Bihar has big ideas She travelled to Norway when she was barely 12 years old to speak on energy conservation. At least switch to CFL and LED, she had pleaded. That was four years ago. Her village in Dumka, Bihar, still has no electricity. At Rio this month, Shweta Marandi gave a one-and-a-half hour presentation on the same subject and was invited to visit Rome and...

India is all set to unveil a path-breaking test for diabetes that will save both money and blood. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is almost ready with a new digital finger-pricking blood sugar machine that will not require repeated use of testing strips. Significantly, it will cost less than Rs 2 per blood sample and require 1,000 times lesser blood than what glucose meters use now. Even better, it...

-The Asian Age   Amidst the high voltage campaign to tom-tom Bihar’s achievements for registering an unprecedented growth rate of 13.13 per cent for the year-2011-12, there exists a dark story. Almost half of the state’s population still lives below poverty line (BPL). According to sources in the Planning Commission, the background note, prepared by the panel for the Plan (2012-13) discussion with Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday, around 48 per...

-The Telegraph   Ashok V. Desai,consulting editor of The Telegraph and chief consultant to the finance minister when Manmohan Singh launched the economic reforms, takes a deep dive into statistics to figure out what is wrong with the economy as Pranab Mukherjee leaves the finance ministry and Singh takes charge The growth rate of gross domestic product is reported to have come down. What does that mean? Before the question can be answered,...

-The Economic Times If Dr Devi Prasad Shetty's vision comes true, most Indians will have access to quality healthcare. Dr Shetty says the cost of healthcare in India can come down by 50% in the next 5-10 years, and this will be forced on the hospitals by the government if service providers do not get their act together. "If you are going to say the cost of a heart surgery is...