A Bachelor of Rural Healthcare course is one of the proposed solutions: Azad Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad has called for “out of the box” solutions to reach out to remote areas so that health services can be provided there at the earliest. Speaking at a two-day national conference of State Health Ministers and Health Secretaries here on Wednesday, Mr. Azad said that in many remote areas...

The Centre today announced doubling of funds allocation under a special plan for Bihar to Rs 2,000 crore for the current fiscal, a move that should please Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who has been seeking greater central assistance. Effectively, the increase in central allocation would mean that the NDA-ruled state can spend extra Rs 1,000 crore on power, roads and irrigation within the three months ending March 31, 2011. The decision to...

If the political system were clean and non-corrupt, the poor and downtrodden including Dalits would get all benefits fully and their living standard would automatically go up, said Prakash Yashwant Ambedkar, grandson of B.R. Ambedkar. He was addressing a district-level meeting of India Kudiyarsu Katchi held here on Sunday evening. The country have enough resources and component for Adi Dravida welfare in the State was around Rs.1,700 crore. If the government...

Even as the media celebrate the Mercedes Benz deal in the Marathwada region as a sign of “rural resurgence,” the latest data show that 17,368 farmers killed themselves in the year of the “resurgence.” When businessmen from Aurangabad in the backward Marathwada region bought 150 Mercedes Benz luxury cars worth Rs. 65 crore at one go in October, it grabbed media attention. The top public sector bank, State Bank of India,...

Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat on Tuesday called for a time-bound commission to look into the anomalies in scheduling tribal communities, and pointed out that there was a huge undercounting of their number. “It is not just the question of numbers. Their right to a share of national resources is not recognised because of undercounting,” she said at a protest organised by the National Platform for...