-The Indian Express Pneumonia continues to be the leading cause of deaths among children under five years of age in India. According to the Pneumonia Progress Report 2012 brought out by the International Vaccine Access Centre and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in 2010, India recorded the highest under-five mortality from the dreaded disease. Though in the period 2000-10, the overall child mortality dipped from 9.6 million to 7.6...

-The Hindu Kerala’s Kudumbashree network and the rural employment guarantee scheme have converged to provide a unique model of empowerment An incredible story of empowerment has been unfolding in the wake of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) programme in the State of Kerala. This is the story of how a socially engineered convergence of the scheme with panchayati raj institutions and the State sponsored community network of poor...

-The Hindu Applications for various services can be submitted online Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala State Information Technology Mission (KSITM) is gearing up for a State-wide roll out of e-district Kerala, a mission mode project under the national e-governance plan. District e-governance committees have been formed in all the 14 districts. As many as 10-lakh digital certificates have been issued to applicants in less than two years since the launch of the pilot project in...

-Business World Wind, water and the sun can help India cut dependence on coal and gas For India, energy security has never seemed more real, more urgent than now. Forty per cent of the country’s 1.2-billion populace is yet to have Access to electricity. Even those getting grid supply suffer poor quality of power. Towns see power cuts more than half the day. The country’s energy deficit, according to the Central Electricity...

-Mainstream Weekly Dr Binayak Sen, an internationally renowned medical practitioner and social activist (a leading figure in the People’s Union for Civil Liberties), was incarcerated in Chhattisgarh and held in detention in Raipur having been branded as a Maoist for his activities in defence of poor tribals in the State. He is now out on bail. The following is the text of the Arvind Narayan Das Memorial Lecture he delivered in...