The ruling coalition, which survived the confidence vote in Parliament on Tuesday, is aiming to cover 60 million households (or about 300 million people) across the country in the next five years under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, which it announced last year. Already, 300-odd patients insured under the scheme have availed of this facility in various listed hospitals in Delhi and Haryana.
The students have now written to their university to involve more students in similar initiatives in the rural areas where they can use their knowledge for development. Agilent is planning to go bigger this year with more students from other institutions to be involved in the education for development drive.
The bauxite-rich Gandhamardan hill in Orissa is likely to become the centre of an environmental and cultural controversy again after two decades. In 1986, India's third-largest alumunium producer Balco had applied for a mining lease in the area when it was a government company. This year, the hill is being sought by Balco again, but this time as a private company owned by London-based commodities entrepreneur Anil Agarwal's Vedanta group.
The Bhopal Gas Relief and Rehabilitation Department is talking to the Indian Army and the Delhi-based National Institute of Disaster Management to help remove the toxic waste lying in the premises of the closed Union Carbide for the last 24 years. Last month, the department requested the Indian Army to help dispose of the waste.
Fodder prices have shot up since 2000, thanks to exports and central excise duty on molasses, which is used to make fodder. The recent inflationary trends have only added to the woes. The molasses used by the cattle-feed industry attracts central excise duty at the rate of Rs 500 per million tonne since 1998. In Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, the government has intervened to cushion the dairy producers against inflation by raising the support prices marginally.
An internal note obtained by activists from the Prime Minister's Office and dated February 2 this year says that the Ministry of Law believes that 'irrespective of the manner in which Union Carbide has merged or has been acquired by Dow, if there is any legal liability it would have to be borne by Dow Chemicals.' The note also puts a question mark on the prospects for future investments by US-based Dow in India.
The two issues that remain are whether Dow inherited Union Carbide's liabilities and why the government never cleaned up Bhopal after settling with Carbide
High food prices have driven inflation to new highs, leading the Centre to clamp down on export of farm commodities.
The latest report says the forest cover is around 20 per cent of the land in the country, 3 per cent less than the area under the forest departments. But the report does not make a distinction between tree cover, commercial plantations and natural forest cover. To qualify as "forest cover", the Forest Survey of India considers 10 per cent tree canopy area and one hectare. So, if a householder has, say, a hectare of coconut palm, his land would qualify as forest cover.
The latest to take up the matter and join issue with the ministry is none other than Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who sent a message from Kolkata to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week, asking him not to allow a proposal to serve biscuits and pre-packaged food to pre-school children. Sen also asked the PM to prevent the move to replace cooked food with packaged food as part of the mid-day meal scheme in elementary schools.
The prime minister of India is over 75 and the man driving the nation's Metro revolution, E Sreedharan, is 75. It seems the world is destined to be eternally young.
Sadly, in India, wages for artisans never take into account their specialised skills.
Days after he died on January 6, Sethi's legacy is being questioned by the very NGO which is today known for taking the Jaipur foot to the masses. The invention won the doctor a Magsaysay award, which in turn has given him enemies.
The protests are meant to highlight the plight of the hundreds of sharecroppers of Singur besides the 12,000 landowners whose land was acquired by the Bengal government for the Tata factory which is to make the small car.
Passports or satellite images are two documents among options for tribals to produce as proof to avail of any entitlements under the ST and Traditional Forest Dwellers Recognition of Forest Rights Act, 2007.
Clean development mechanism (CDM) should be used to make the prices affordable for the poor.
These are the Zipp money centres which are being introduced for the first time in the country by the Commonwealth Business Council (CBC), a forum formed in 1997 and which has inclusive banking interventions as one of its key projects. The money centres have already brought banking to the doorstep in many villages and far-flung areas in one district in Uganda where CBC started the project.
The main "culprit" for CO2 emissions is coal-based energy which has 24 per cent share in India's emissions and 41 per cent worldwide. While coal accounts for 25 per cent of energy, the role of renewables is 13 per cent. Of these, wind, solar and bio masses contribute just 4.1 per cent.
Ogilvy has signed on with the Madhya Pradesh sports department to pump up an awareness drive about the sports centres or the Grameen Yuva Kendras among the villagers. But, for Ogilvy, the drive stretches beyond the villages into the ears of the industry.
These schools bring literacy to women in a one-month course.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances