A cabinet committee approves the continuation of the Social and Infrastructure Development Fund beyond 2007-08. Rs. 6000 crore will provided for the fund this year (via The Hindu) Laloo bhai is on the move again, the Indian Railways initiates a $160 million modernization plan. In case you haven’t heard, the Indian Railways success is now [...]

Sify.com reports that Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in partnership with ICICI Lombard General Insurance has launched a health insurance scheme for differently-abled individuals living below the poverty line: The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has awarded the mandate to ICICI Lombard General Insurance to provide health insurance to a maximum of 1,00,000 [...]

A new United Nations report, Redefining AIDS in Asia: Crafting an Effective Response, was just released and makes an astonishing prediction: 500,000 peaple could die each year people due to AIDS-related illnesses by 2020. (Source: PSD Blog) Another UN report focuses on the rise of food costs in Asia due to the use of crops [...]

The 5th annual Manthan Awards, which aim to encourage usage of ICT for the empowerment of rural communities in India, are underway.  The mission of the competition is as follows: To create an information rich society where everyone, irrespective of caste, religion, race, region, gender etc., is empowered to create, receive, share and utilize information [...]

For a poor woman living with HIV in India, the challenges are threefold - economic hardship, stigma, and lack of employment/credit opportunities due to gender discrimination.  Borne at the intersection of these realities is the “Women and Wealth Project,” recently launched by the UNDP’s Regional HIV and Development Programme.  The purpose of the project is to provide [...]

Currently, there are only 4 laptops of its kind in circulation in India – two in Banglalore and one each in Jaipur and Chennai.  The Trivitron t300 costs between Rs. 1.2 million and Rs. 3 million, and is ”designed for general, vascular, and breast imaging, interventional radiology, image-guided intervention, endocrinology, laparoscopy, neuro-sonography and nephrology.”  The innovative aspect of the technology, [...]

The UNDP is organizing its 6th annual forum of the World Alliance of Cities against Poverty (WACAP) from March 26 – 28th to “engage municipalities on local plans of action in reducing poverty through fostering local democracy.” Various facets of poverty expected to be addressed by participating municipalities are sanitation, child mortality, maternal mortality, diseases [...]

According to a recent A. C. Neilsen ORG MARG survey, the approximately 10.5 lakh women in panchayati raj (village level governance) have gained significant influence in key decision-making.  In fact, the report has also found that a larger proportion of women have risen to local governance positions within the panchayati raj: The survey, conducted across [...]

The Sustainable Brands Conference is slated to come to Monterey, CA this upcoming June 2nd to the 5th.  Some information regarding the conference follows: The global move toward innovation for sustainability is alive and well, and leading companies big and small are capitalizing on this new opportunity to build sales and brand equity.  How can [...]

To piggyback on a recent post by Shital, the aforementioned report on “Wi-fi in India” also forecasted that “the overall Indian Wi-Fi market (including WLAN hardware, systems integration and software services, not including embedded devices, laptops) is predicted to grow from the current $41.57 million to exceed $744 million by 2012 (compound annual growth rate (CAGR) [...]