-Down to Earth The primary health centre (PHC) at Ajara block in Maharashtra's Kolhapur district would handle just eight childbirth cases a year till 2011. Today, it handles over 125 such cases in a year. The health centre became efficient because of a Central government scheme that empowers communities to monitor public health services. In 2010, the residents participated in a jan sunwai (public hearing) session, in which they told senior...

-Business Standard Workdays under the scheme in 2014 crashed to less than half of previous year's, delay in fund transfers and payment to workers, says rural devt ministry report The former Union rural development minister Nitin Gadkari caused 'psychological' damage to the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGS) with statements questioning the need to continue the scheme across the entire country, the ministry has assessed in its new report. Gadkari was minister...

-The Hindustan Times New Delhi: For a long time, 12- year-old Rohan, an HIV positive child, was in pain but could not comprehend why. For months, he passed blood with his stools. Finally, a counsellor drew a sketch after Rohan pointed to his mouth and back and the truth emerged: He was regularly being forced into oral and anal sex. Rohan then drew a picture of Ashish, one of his co-inmates at...

-The Hindu The very process of development and change in India may be generating new forms of social and economic competition that manifest themselves in terms of social bias Popular debate around social biases in India is structured around two competing narratives. One view holds that as an urbanising country with rapid economic growth over the past few decades, the importance of ascriptive identities such as caste and religion is gradually eroding....

-The Times of India BENGALURU: Farmer suicides have been on the rise in neighbouring Maharashtra and Telangana. But Karnataka appears to be bucking the trend, with the number of cases showing a sharp decline over the past five years. According to latest data from the state agriculture department, the number of farmers' suicide in Karnataka has declined from 145 in 2009-10 to 50 in 2014. This despite drought and other natural calamities...