-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A national disaster risk index mapping hazards and vulnerabilities across 640 districts puts Maharashtra at the top of the chart followed by West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, while Delhi is most at risk among Union territories (UTs). At first glance, the lower hazard ranking to states like those in the north-east and others like Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, which are prone to earthquakes or...

-The Indian Express Dr Venugopal, an obstetrician and secretary general of KFOG, said the state's health apparatus showed progress as a result of 'systemic actions' adopted by doctors and government officials. Kochi: Kerala’s superior health Infrastructure and its advances in improving delivery care facilities and nutritional level among pregnant women have resulted in further reduction of the maternal mortality rate (MMR) (proportion of maternal deaths per 1 lakh live births) in the...

-The Indian Express Closure of Sterlite plant says something about our collective morality: Death, violence move governments more than reason and evidence It took a brazen exercise of what sociologists since Max Weber refer to as the state’s “monopoly of violence” by Tamil Nadu authorities to bring our attention to a problem that had been affecting the local residents of Tuticorin for over two decades. Since this tragic incident, it took hardly...

-The Indian Express The bullet train project, planned after discussions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe, is being built with a Rs 88,000-crore soft loan from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Palghar: As politicians across party lines gathered on stage together in Palghar on Sunday calling for the ambitious Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project to be cancelled, they repeatedly cited the word ‘vikas’, qualifying it with the...

-The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy As Prime Minister Narendra Modi completes four years in office this month, it is becoming increasingly clear that his government has fallen short on the promises made during the 2014 election campaign. The economy has performed below expectations, and some of the economic metrics today are weaker than what the country witnessed in the last years – labelled the ‘policy paralysis’ phase –...