NEW DELHI: If inflation has broken the back of the aam aadmi, the biggest contributor to the pain in the UPA’s term is food prices.

Government data on wholesale price index (WPI) shows that there has been a 63% increase in the price of all commodities between April 2004, a month before UPA took charge, and April 2012, the latest period for which data is available. But when it comes to food products, the index has more than doubled from 98 to 206.4. So, you are now spending at least twice the amount you spent in April 2004 just to meet your basic consumption needs.

Of the 60-odd items analyzed by TOI and Crisil, there is just one case – ginger – where the price has decreased, going by the index. In all other cases, there has been an increase. Within these commodities, there are only eight products – guava, coconut, garlic, papaya, onions, turmeric, tea and chicken – where the rise in prices is less than 63%.

The spurt in food prices is mainly due to demand outstripping supply as productivity has remained stagnant for most of the commodities.

For households, especially the poor, food inflation can have the most damaging impact, given that a bulk of spending in the lower income strata is on this segment. While the poor can draw some comfort from the fact that cereal prices are not among the commodities which have seen the maximum jump, the overall increase is still over 90% with wheat and rice, on an average, seeing over 80% increase.

While protein-rich items such as milk, egg, meat and fish have seen prices more than double, it is vegetables that have caused the maximum dent to the housewife’s monthly budget. This segment has seen a 171% jump. So, if you spent Rs 3,000 a month on vegetables seven years ago, you would now be spending over Rs 5,000. Given that cabbage now costs six-and-a-half times more than April 2004, you can draw comfort from the fact that during this period, potato and brinjal prices have only gone up by 111% and 140%, respectively. Similarly, bhindi now costs four-and-a-half times more.

Even fruits have seen a lower spurt of around 90% with prices of mangoes, oranges, apples and pineapple more than doubling. When it comes to spices, black pepper has seen the biggest jump (335%). Coffee makes up the top five commodities in terms of price rise with an increase of 269%.

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LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday said that financial irregularities were all-pervasive during the five-year tenure of Mayawati and affected practically every segment of the society. Yadav said that over Rs 40,000 crore were misappropriated in schemes ranging from eco parks to the NRHM.

The government would soon set up a commission to bring the probes into various scams under a single investigating authority along with inquiries recommended by the Lok Ayukta against a number of ministers in the previous government, Yadav said on Tuesday here.

People usually tend to take into account the money spent on a project as its net worth of the scam. But the actual cost of these projects turn out to be much higher, Akhilesh said. “When government makes such assessments, it includes the cost of land used, value of the existing structure razed to the ground for the new project, the repeated changes in design and construction work – all of this directly amounts to losses to the state exchequer,” the chief minister said.

As per the government’s estimates, the total worth of scams during the BSP rule is over Rs 40,000 crore, which is almost equal to the annual outlay for the state during 2011 – 2012 and is nearly one-fourth of the state’s annual budget of Rs 1.89 lakh crore.

The major scams which had allegedly taken place during the Mayawati regime and are under the SP government’s scanner are NRHM scam, toilet scam, elephant statues scam, Noida land scam, High Security Registration Plates (HSRP) tender scam, seed scam, etc. Investigations and inquiries are under way in each of these scams and in 50% of the cases, arrests have also been made leaving hardly any scope of doubt over allegations of misappropriation.

Though investigations into these scams have led to the arrest of bureaucrats and even senior ministers in the BSP government, the investigators are yet to establish a possible direct link between the misappropriations and the then chief minister Mayawati.

However, senior SP ministers have started accusing Mayawati of being directly involved in the scams. On Monday, health and family welfare minister Ahmed Hasan said: “Mayawati’s name is also figuring in the NRHM scam.” Another senior minister Azam Khan said that the allegations being levelled by the SP all these years are turning out to be true.

On Tuesday, former UP chief minister Rajnath Singh joined the chorus saying: “It is virtually impossible that such huge amounts were swindled and the then chief minister and Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati was neither aware nor involved in the whole thing. Such huge sums of money cannot be swindled without the consent and interest of the chief minister,” Rajnath Singh said on Tuesday.

But the BSP says that the accusations of scams were a mere political gimmick. Party’s state president Swami Prasad Maurya said Mayawati had been the only chief minister till date to have taken stringent action against her own ministers and MLAs when ever they were found taking the law in their hand. “Name me one chief minister to have done this?” he questioned. “All this hype about the scams is being cooked up only to cover-up the government’s failure in controlling the crime situation in the state,” the SP state president said.

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NEW DELHI: India will for the first time introduce a vaccine against Rubella – a viral disease that infects pregnant women and leads to babies being born with cardiac, cerebral, ophthalmic and auditory defects.

The Union health ministry so far believed that the disease, also called German Measles, did not affect Indians. Now, the ministry estimates that around 30,000 abnormal children are being born annually because of Rubella. Many experts, however, say the accurate figure would be around two lakh babies.

The ministry has decided to introduce a combination vaccine that will protect children against both measles and Rubella in its national immunization programme. Both pregnant women and children will be vaccinated with it.

“We have finalized the plan to introduce the vaccine against Rubella. Till now, most cases of Rubella got wrongly labeled as measles because both the diseases have similar symptoms and manifestations. We will roll out the vaccine from June. It won’t even cost a lot. While a single dose measles vaccine costs around Rs 4, a combo with both measles and Rubella will cost around Rs 9,” said a ministry official.

He added, “If we start with vaccinating young children, the virus takes refuge by attacking adult population. Hence, we plan to vaccinate both adults – children and girls in child bearing age. The National Technical Advisory Group of Immunization (NTAGI) approved the introduction of a Rubella vaccine in its last meeting.”

The ministry says Rubella primarily affects the fetus if the mother is infected in the first three months of pregnancy.

All women in the childbearing age are at risk of developing Rubella. Experts say, if a woman gets Rubella in the early months of her pregnancy, there is an 80% chance that her baby will be born deaf or blind, with a damaged heart or small brain, or mentally retarded. This is called Congenital Rubella Syndrome (CRS).

Miscarriages are also common among women who get Rubella, while they are pregnant.

The virus may affect all organs and cause a variety of congenital defects. Infection may lead to fetal death, spontaneous abortion or premature delivery.

Usually, Rubella virus strikes in winter and spring and causes a slight fever, a rash on the face and neck, and (when teenagers or adults get the disease) swollen glands in the back of the neck and arthritis-like symptoms in the joints. It is spread from person to person through the air, by coughing, sneezing or breathing. The incubation period of rubella is 14 days, with a range of 12-23 days.

The greatest danger from Rubella is to unborn babies. Many mothers, who contract Rubella within the first critical trimester either have a miscarriage or a stillborn baby.

“Reports from different parts of India highlight the existence of Rubella leading to fetal malformations and wastage. However, the need for routine immunization to control Rubella has not been duly recognized. Our latest studies show high prevalence of Rubella infections, and has pushed the need to protect susceptible women in reproductive age group,” an official said.

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NEW DELHI: Actor Aamir Khan, whose first episode of tele-show Satyamev Jayate focused on sex selection, will be happy to hear this.

In 2011, 21 clinics and 22 doctors were convicted under the Pre-Conception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994, for carrying out sex selection of an unborn child.

Census, 2011, showed girl child is still a curse and unwanted. And, the girl child population has fallen to an all-time low since Independence. The sex ratio for 2011 stands at 914 girls down from 927 girls for 1,000 boys in 2001.

Maharashtra led the way in 2011, with the highest number of convicted cases against doctors at 15, followed by Haryana (7) and Madhya Pradesh (2).

Majority of the punishments included three years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine anywhere between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1.3 lakh.

Dr Ambadas Kadam from Maharashtra was convicted on November 14, 2011, with a three-year jail term and had to cough up the highest compensation of Rs 1.3 lakh.

All the convictions in Haryana resulted in a three-year jail term, and also had to pay fines between Rs 1,000 and Rs 10,000.

The two convictions in MP resulted in imprisonment of one month and a fine of Rs 1,000. Maharashtra, however, made an example of such cases. The minimum jail term in all the convictions in the state was two years. Fines charged were Rs 70,000, Rs 60,000, Rs 52,000 and Rs 38,000 in majority of the cases.

According to Union health ministry’s figures, only around 6% of cases filed against doctors involved in sex selection practices in the 17 states with the most skewed sex ratio had ended up in convictions till March, 2011.

Altogether 805 cases had been filed in court against doctors till March 31, 2011, ever since the revised PC and PNDT Act came into force. Only 55 convictions were recorded during the same period.

The rest of the cases were either still going on or dropped for “poor investigation and insufficient evidence against the accused”.

Till March, 2011, convictions were highest in Haryana (23), followed by Punjab (22), Gujarat (4), Maharashtra (3), Delhi (2) and Chandigarh (1). The highest number of cases against doctors was filed in Rajasthan (161), but none has resulted in conviction till date.

Maharashtra filed 139 cases, Punjab (112), Gujarat (82), MP (70), Delhi (61), Uttar Pradesh and Haryana (54), Andhra Pradesh (19), Bihar (10), Uttarakhand (9), Chhattisgarh (5), Jharkhand (3) and Chandigarh (2).

During the same period, 168 ultrasound machines were sealed in Gujarat, followed by Haryana (133). Maharashtra sealed 82 machines, Rajasthan (76), Odisha (68), Delhi (48), Punjab (26), UP (37), Jharkhand (13) and Andhra Pradesh (12).

“Recent meetings impressed upon states on the importance of follow up of a court case, building a strong case for prosecution, putting in place the mechanism for legal assistance and engagement with state legal services authorities, besides training workshops for judiciary and public prosecutors,” an official said.

An official added, “India’s conviction rates are shockingly low. That’s because doctors, who carry out the search and seizure operations, aren’t good at filing legal cases and presenting a full-proof investigation, helping violators go scot-free.”

The 17 states were recently told by the ministry to identify and map their worst-affected districts, blocks and even localities.

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