Full Coverage: India

30.12.2005 Still struggling with the issue of over a lakh women dying at childbirth every year, health experts are still debating whether traditional birth attendants, called dai in rural areas, should be actively involved in the family welfare programme.

30.12.2005 Collector Navin Mittal of Krishna district in Vijayawada announced that the district administration would open special hostels for children of HIV-positive parents from the next academic year. Vidya volunteers would be appointed to take care of the needs of those children at the hostels.

30.12.2005 OneWorld South Asia and another local non-government organization, Aradhya composed two songs on AIDS and was recognized by the Delhi State Aids Control Society.

30.12.2005 A recent report by an Indian government agency says that little attention is being paid to the standardisation, research and development of the Indian traditional system of medicine - ayurveda.

30.12.2005 In a big step forward to make the ambitious mid-day meal scheme for children more attractive, HRD ministry has asked state governments to mobilise mothers to monitor the cooking and feeding of the meals.

30.12.2005 The ninth national conference on egovernance will be held at
Le Meridien, Kochi, Keralam from 2 to 4 February 2006.

30.12.2005 US based PeerMe Inc on Thursday launched its Internet voice communication systems in India which the company said would be free and unlimited.

30.12.2005 The Reserve Bank of India is focusing on research and analysis of the productivity trends in India on a continuous basis, Y V Reddy, Reserve Bank of India governor, said.

30.12.2005 Taking the world wide web to the rural masses, the Haryana government is setting up 'e-Chaupals' (cybercafes) in 150 villages of Sirsa district. The e-chaupals would initially be set up in villages with populations of 5,000 under the Rashtriya Sam Vikas Yojana (RSVY) for the eighth lakh people that reside in 323 villages of Sirsa district.

30.12.2005 As bulks of rural development outlays are employment-related, there is considerable scope for the various schemes to be streamlined and re-fashioned as an employment guarantee scheme.

30.12.2005 Rural households are more in debt vis-a-vis urban households, and account for over 60 per cent of the total debt in the country.

30.12.2005 Charkha Development Communication Network has announced that it will award the best articles that bring to light community efforts to rebuild lives following the 8th October earthquake in Kashmir. This initiative is under the Sanjoy Ghose Humanitarian Award for Story Writing 2005-06 and is only applicable to residents from the state.

30.12.2005 Now religious and spiritual leaders would be brought together to focus on the alarming fall in the child sex ratio in Rajasthan. Agencies working in the field planned to involve religious and spiritual leaders of Jains, Jats, Sikhs, Rajputs, Gurjars and Muslim community as they attain a powerful hold in their community and bestow upon the community a voice and the presence in the larger societal framework.

29.12.2005 The Cyber Crime Wing (CCW) of the city police is all set to announce the guidelines for internet centres in the wake of e-mail threat to Parliament and US consulates recently.

29.12.2005 A two-day National Colloquium on RTI witnessed the identification of the judiciary as being foremost in effectively implementing the Right to Information Act.

29.12.2005 Chairman of Infosys Technologies Limited N.R. Narayana Murthy on Wednesday said corruption has become pervasive in institutions in the country and there is a strong incentive for politicians to keep people ignorant and illiterate.

29.12.2005 In Dorli village in Wardha, farmers simply put up signs announcing their whole village was for sale. It worked, with the local MP giving them Rs.10 lakh. Eslewhere, despair only deepens. Farm suicides have begun in rich Western Maharashtra, too.

29.12.2005 The former Secretary to the Government of India and Trustee of the Catalyst Trust, A.K. Venkataubramanian said that unless there is overwhelming participation from the citizens, the Right to Information Act would not succeed.

29.12.2005 Adolescence, for most, is a period of confusion, and many fall wayward due to absence of timely intervention and guidance. In an effort to make adolescents cope up with the pressures of the modern day, the Rotary Mysore Midtown conducted a programme on life skill education for adolescents recently.

29.12.2005 With the international community expressing concern about the high maternal and infant mortality in India, Union Health Ministry is looking at inter-ministerial partnerships to tackle the problem. Instead of running parallel programmes the ministry and the Department of Women and Child Development have decided to converge at the village level.