India’s new prime minister swept into office in May on a message of aspiration and a reputation for action.

During the nearly 13 years that Narendra Modi served as chief minister of Gujarat before becoming prime minister, his successes included drastically curtailing the number of hours that manufacturers in India’s premier industrial state went without electricity. The state’s transmission grid was strengthened and he promoted the development of 900 megawatts of solar generating capacity (equivalent to a large nuclear plant).

The importance of reproductive health and rights in responding to global climate change and facilitating sustainable development is becoming increasingly clear. But as two articles recently published in The Lancet explain, any post-Millennium Development Goals development agenda that hopes to address these issues must do a better job reaching populations that have largely been excluded from recent advancements.

In the quest to improve maternal health care for the world’s poorest women, getting more mothers into clinics for regular check-ups during pregnancy is often trumpeted as a critical starting point. But delivering antenatal care to women in low-resource settings is as much about quality as it is about quantity, says Faith Muigai in this week’s podcast.

There are now well over 16 million refugees worldwide and 65 million people internally displaced by conflict and disasters, according to recent estimates. As more and more people are uprooted from their homes, mounting environmental pressures threaten to reinforce cycles of poverty and displacement if left unaddressed, says Alice Thomas in this week’s podcast.