Say Govt. must focus on making the most of available resources

As Delhi gets ready to implement public-private partnership models in the city to plug water and revenue leaks and ensure round-the-clock supply, water conservation experts want the Administration to look beyond dams and private companies and focus instead on water harvesting, recycling and off-channel reservoirs.

Gadgil says it’s premature to evaluate report

A working group headed by Planning Commission member K. Kasturirangan will assess the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) report and submit an action plan for its “effective implementation” to the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF). The Ministry has asked the group to evaluate the report of the Madhav Gadgil panel in a “holistic and multidisciplinary fashion in the light of the comments” received from various stakeholders, including State governments and Central Ministries.

With non-communicable diseases (NCDs) expected to rise in years to come, the Planning Commission, in its proposed health chapter for the 12th Plan, has recommended a package of policy interventions for the escalating threat of NCDs like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancers and chronic respiratory diseases which will emerge as major killers.

The experts have proposed interventions like raising taxes on tobacco, salt reduction in processed foods, early detection and effective control of high blood pressure, diabetes, screening for common and treatable cancers etc.

With an aim to determine health impact of existing and new policies which have a bearing on health of population, a dedicated “health impact cell” for conducting analysis is in the anvil.

According to the Planning Commission’s proposed document on health, the views of the cell will be taken into consideration before framing or modifying policies. Opining that the impact of policies and programmes of non-health sectors on health remains invisible for long periods.

New Delhi: India aims to meet the much-awaited goal of reaching the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman — to 2.1% by the end of 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-17)

The second meeting of the National Ganga River Basin Authority’s inter-Ministerial group in Delhi on Tuesday could not make much headway on the contentious issue of the under-construction hydro-electric project on the Alaknanda at Srinagar in Uttarakhand.

The group, headed by Planning Commission Member B. K. Chaturvedi, heard the builders of the project and the campaigners for the protection of the Dhari Devi temple on the river, but there appeared to be no convergence.

Accusing that the Planning Commission ignored suggestions of the Working Group while preparing the draft chapter on health, the Union health ministry has sent out its reservations and have suggested major changes in the health chapter to the Commission.

In a recent communication to the Planning Commission, the health ministry has said that certain changes have been made including updating the figures, correcting factual inaccuracies to give positive “overtone” rather than negative connotion. “Changes have been made in the track change mode in the report,” said the comments made by the health ministry on the proposed chapter on health in the 12th plan document.

India's most ambitious urban development plan, the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, has run into a wall with the finalisation of its second phase being delayed due to a turf war bet

AIZAWL, Aug 15 (IANS): Mizoram will be the gateway to Southeast Asian countries after the construction of the Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport Project in neighbouring Myanmar, Chief Minister La

Scheme coming for free distribution of medicines through public hospitals and health centres

The government will expand the scope of the NRHM to all towns and cities, by converting it into a National Health Mission (NHM), Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced on Wednesday. In his Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort here, he said the government was also formulating a new scheme for distribution of free medicines through public hospitals and health centres.