The government on Sunday gave a strong push to upgradation and expansion of healthcare infrastructure, medical education and pharma sector with the Union Budget 2026-27 announcing a slew of steps, including those aimed at making India a global hub for allied healthcare professionals and biopharma manufacturing.
Budget for women and children welfare increased from Rs 1,56,528 crores to Rs 1,84,632 crores for 2017-18
'These children possess catastrophically low birth weights -- often 1.4 kgs or less. Such extremely low birth weight results in profoundly compromised neo-natal immunity.' 'The escalation to 97 deaths in three months precipitated contemporary attention precisely because this magnitude concentrates the humanitarian emergency, rendering it impossible for the administrative machinery to ignore.'
New Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has, however, taken up the challenge on how to synchronise the employment guarantee programme with the ground realities.
Every third child in Gujarat is underweight, says the CAG
In his Budget speech, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced that the government is committed to the universalisation of the Integrated Child Development Services scheme in the country. Expressing grave concern at the low level of female literacy in the country, Mukherjee said the aim of the National Mission for Female Literacy would be to reduce the current level of female illiteracy by half in three years.
The Net venture will record state Anganwadi workers and the children under their care
Wheat will be now be sold to the schemes at Rs 2 per kg, while rice would be given at Rs 3 per kg.
Terming the problem of malnutrition in the country as a national shame, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said the government cannot rely solely on the Integrated Child Development Scheme to tackle it. "The problem of malnutrition is a matter of national shame. Despite impressive growth in our GDP, the level of under-nutrition in the country is unacceptably high," Dr Singh said while releasing a report on Hunger and Malnutrition in Delhi.
Are the ChildLine booths for runaway children an attempt to sanitise Indian railway stations or a genuine effort for the protection of 'railway kids'?
The controversy over whether the government should mandate cooked food or pre-packaged meals at child care centres (anganwadis) and for the mid-day meal scheme in primary schools under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) misses the wood for the trees.
Munde, the Women and Child Development minister, has been accused of irregularities in procurement of items worth Rs 206 crore including chikki.
With its verdict, the Supreme Court has strengthened the spirit of 'Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat' and has reminded us that what define us are bonds of unity and a shared commitment to good governance.
She came under the cloud of allegation of clearing contract worth Rs 206 crore for purchase of a host of items under the Integrated Child Development Scheme.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley more than halved the central government's financial support.
The incident, which took place on April 15 evening, came to light on Wednesday after local television channels flashed the CCTV footage showing the alleged torture at the 'Shishu Gruha'.
Budget has provided an additional assistance of Rs. 500 crore to the National Skill Development Fund.
Fadnavis said the 'minute details' will be gone into before an inquiry is ordered.
Pratham's latest report on rural education has some good news, but it's mainly bad.
The supplementary nutrition programme and the Poshan Abhiyaan under the Women and Child Development Ministry has been merged to launch Mission Poshan 2.0 to strengthen nutritional content, delivery, outreach, and outcome, according to the Union Budget announced on Monday.
Women and children have been given short shrift with these crucial sectors facing substantive budgetary cuts, discovers Rashme Sehgal.
Whether it was the MGNREGS or the NFSA or the Aadhaar-based DBT scheme for cash transfer, the Modi government has built on the basic architecture created by the Singh government. Policy makers in the Modi government, instead of discarding them as products of the previous political regime, worked on them, expanded their scope and reach, and used new tools to improve their performance, explains A K Bhattacharya.
The map below shows the classification of this score into Mostly Dirty, Somewhat Clean and Mostly Clean.
The Left party had favoured spending six and three per cent of GDP on education and health care sectors.
The Centre's programmes of maternity benefit and Child Protection Services also got a major boost in the Budget.
The ministers fanned out to different districts and interacted with officials and people to take stock of the implementation of government schemes at the grassroots level.
Economist Arvind Panagariya is the vice-chairman of NITI Aayog, while economist Bibek Debroy and scientist V K Saraswat are the two full-time members of the Aayog.
Here are the key highlights of the Interim Budget 2019-20 presented by Finance Minister Piyush Goyal in the Lok Sabha on Friday.
In an address at an election rally in this southern-most part of Mizoram bordering Myanmar, Singh said violence is no solution to any problem and the two communities in Manipur must talk to each other to improve the situation in the troubled state.
The Child Protection Services programme under the Integrated Child Development Services was increased to Rs 1,500 crore from Rs 925 crore.
Deputy CM Manish Sisodia says it's the 'biggest failure of our system'.
Yechury said the aim should be how to protect our economy from slowdown
India might be heading towards a "serious livelihood crisis" as the situation seems to be worse this time for the working class amid the COVID crisis and local restrictions by states already add up to something close to a nationwide lockdown, according to noted economist Jean Dreze. In an interview to PTI, he also said the government's target to make India a $5 trillion economy by 2024-25 was never a "feasible target" and was just to pander to the "super-power ambitions" of the Indian elite. About the impact of the second wave of COVID on the Indian economy, the eminent economist said the situation today is not very different from what it was around this time last year as far as working people are concerned.
In an otherwise agriculture- and public health-focused Union Budget 2018-19, artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain technology, internet of things -- jargons that found little or no mention in the previous Budgets -- managed to make their presence felt.
The BJP also announced a Rs 5 meal scheme for all, named after religious guru Anukul Chandra, and setting up of a Regional Institute of Medical Sciences hospital in Agartala.
'Just because of my background and poor academic qualifications, most people disbelieve what I have done.'
NDA under Mr Modi is as focused on the rural poor with doles and hand-outs as the UPA under Dr Singh was.
'Given that 95 per cent of rapes are committed by adults and only 5 per cent by juveniles, these 95 per cent of rapes will continue to take place, so what women's safety are we talking about?'
At some stage this fall in the quality of life will begin to hurt anybody's popularity, observes Shekhar Gupta.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday accused the Centre of pursuing vindictive politics and using central agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate to terrorise people in the non Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states.
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