TC-I Tidbits

Your daily dose of headlines:

Health: The pharmaceutical industry in India fears that one in five drugs sold in the country are fake. A study undertaken by the by the drug controller general will focus on this.
Transportation: India and France on Wednesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding for cooperation in railways, including constructing world class stations, [...]

Using Regulation to promote Social Business: The case of IRDA

Livemint reports that India’s insurance companies (private and state-owned) are expanding rapidly in rural markets, and have topped the IRDA’s mandatory rural targets.
Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) is Government of India body set-up to regulate the insurance sector, which has gone through significant liberalization in the last decade. IRDA has continuously emphasized the [...]

TC-I Tidbits

Your daily dose of headlines:

Technology: Trak.in reports that a DesiWiki will help Indian start ups to increase their knowledge base on the technical aspects of starting a new venture.
Education: In order to encourage students to stay in school, the government approved a merit scholarship that will award deserving students of lower income sections with Rs [...]

The Talent Vacuum

Many of our prior posts have spoken to the urgent need to overhaul, or at the least, significantly revamp the education system in India, as evidenced by the massive rise in demand for both primary and higher education institutions in relation to dwindling supply (not to mention the relatively low quality of instruction/infrastructure at pre-existing [...]

TC-I Tidbits

You daily dose of headlines:

Health, Women and Mortality:The lack of inclusion of midwives within the National Rural Health Mission is highlighted as one of the main reasons for the high maternal mortality rate in India.
Education: Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (WNTA) continued to push the government to pass the Right to Education Bill.
Public Awareness: Swagat Thorat, [...]

TC-I Tidbits

Your daily dose of headlines:

Health: Over 53% children in India under five years - that is, 67 million - live without basic healthcare facilities. This means that India alone accounts for about one-third of all children in the world aged below five who don’t have basic healthcare. [Source: Times of India]
Education: There is a shortage [...]

TC-I Tidbits

Your daily dose of headlines:

Mobile bank: HDFC plans to unveil its pilot mobile bank branch with an ATM aimed at microfinance clients. While the term mobile bank here differs from what we envision with regard to the use of mobile phones, it is still a step in the right direction.
Women’s reservations: The Congress Party has [...]

Who Represents India’s Women?

On average, Indian women work longer hours than men, as their day consists of a more diverse array of tasks relating both to the maintenance of their livelihoods (public sphere) and homes (domestic sphere). In rural India, this could take the form of both working in the fields and performing domestic duties such as cooking, [...]

TC-I Tidbits

Your daily dose of headlines:

Health: India continues to have the world’s highest number of polio cases this year, with the disease having crippled more children till April than it did during the same period in 2007. [Source: Times of India]
Children: In a unique lobbying effort, more than 100 ex-child laborers knocked on the doors of [...]

Entrepreneurship Encouraged by the Government

iGovernment reports that the Indian government is encouraging the growth of entrepreneurship in several different ways, from public private partnerships to employment generation programs. In its Eleventh Plan, macro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) clusters will be promoted.
The Rajiv Gandhi Udyami Mitra Yojana will assist potential 1.5 lakh first-generation entrepreneurs in completion of various [...]

TC-I Tidbits

Here is the daily dose of headlines:

Water supply: In Chennai, city officials have made it mandatory that buildings connected to the main water supply install meters to measure consumption.
Government transparency: The Central Information Commission (CIC) will now require political parties to make their income tax returns available to the public. Sending the exact opposite message, [...]

TC-I Tidbits

Your daily dose of headlines:

International: The US government has put India on its ‘Priority Watch List’, along with nine other countries, saying that the country’s failure to protect Intellectual Property Rights is putting health, safety and jobs of its citizens at risk. [Source: Times of India]
Literacy: The Global Monitoring Report says that India has 35 [...]

World’s Largest Census?

OneWorld South Asia just published a great piece by Bappa Majumdar on India’s preparation for one of the world’s biggest ever censuses. This once in ten-year exercise is an important national report card, especially to understand the impact that the growing economy has on the country’s population. The scale of the effort is somewhat mind-blowing:
Millions [...]

Killing Two Birds with One Stone: Expand NREGA

Last month, we posted about the expansion of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) to all districts in India starting on April 1. Even though the government chose to expand this program, the scheme has its share of pros and cons. A recent article in The Economist highlights the strengths of NREGA as its [...]

Eco-Wise: Braving New Frontiers in Waste Management

Waste management is a significant challenge for India, specifically in urban areas, where the accumulation of trash leads to the prevalence of preventable diseases in poor, underprivileged populations. In order to address this issue, change is required on both a systemic and individual level, as the cause of the problem is rooted not only in [...]