Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
Asha, 24, visits the Bhopal Memorial Trust Hospital once every 2 days. She has a hole in her heart. But the hospital won't operate her, because she has overshot the hospital quota of Rs two lakh per victim. She cannot get herself operated privately. "I have spent the compensation of …
• Developing countries devote more than a third of their budgets on education, healthcare, water and sanitation services, but little is actually spent on the poor • The poor often pay more than the rich for the same goods and travel longer distances to avail basic services • India's richest …
Forty year old Ganga stays in a slum close to the derelict Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) plant in Bhopal. She came to the city long after the gas leak. But Ganga shows symptoms associated with victims of the leak, nevertheless
organic reservoir: Spreading an ultra-thin layer of organic molecules on the surface of reservoirs could prevent millions of cubic metres of water evaporating each year, according to Flexible Solutions, a Canadian company. It is the first to commercialise the technique. Field tests of the technology conducted in several countries show …
This article is a history of the last stage of the global smallpox eradication programme, christened in India as the National Smallpox Eradication Programme (NSEP). Here I have attempted to show how the Intensive Campaign of the NSEP was forced to abandon its erstwhile language of targets and returns, whose …
West Africa is hell-bent on eradicating polio. In a remarkable effort, via "synchronized' national immunization day (nid) programmes from October 19 to 26, thousands of volunteers and health workers fanned out to administer the oral polio vaccine to 15 million children in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Togo, and …
militancy-ridden Kashmir has another problem on its hands: over the past decade the state has witnessed a sharp rise in the incidence of cancer. Experts attribute the trend to changed lifestyles, urbanisation and lack of awareness among the people. Coincidentally, the disease has manifested itself more extensively in the valley …
a homoeopathic medicine prepared from arsenic oxide could ease the suffering of millions of people at risk from arsenic poisoning. Researchers from West Bengal-based University of Kalyani have developed the antidote called arsenicum album. Its microdoses not only remove arsenic from the body, but they also have the ability to …
The stage is set for the December 1 assembly elections in Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Coming after a healthy monsoon that was preceded by a severe dry spell, the polls offer parties the perfect platform for articulating their stand on matters concerning development. A Down To Earth (dte) …
even the heavy monsoon may not be able to drown out the political parties' poll pitch with regard to drought-relief work in Rajasthan. The two major contenders in the state
in the capital, a clean break seems to have been made with the rancorous mudslinging that is part and parcel of an election campaign. Instead, substantive issues are fuelling the verbal slugfests in the run-up to the assembly polls. Matters pertaining to participatory governance, development and the environment have taken …
madhya pradesh (mp) is one of the few states in India where development, or the lack of it, can have a direct bearing on the outcome of the elections. The ensuing assembly polls in the state are also being fought largely on this plank. On the one hand, chief minister …
The first day of a multilateral conference involving most of the world’s nations is usually spent on procedural matters. So it was at Cancun, Mexico, where the Fifth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was held from September 11 to September 14, 2003. After the usual ceremonial inauguration, …
At Cancun (“snakepit” in Spanish), it was widely expected that negotiations on agriculture would make or break the talks. However, delegates were quick to point to two other issues as equally damaging: (a) the manner in which the Cotton Initiative was methodically dismissed by the US; and (b) the poisonous …
In his Independence Day speech from the Red Fort, Prime Minster Atal Bihari Vajpayee promised six hospitals akin to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (aiims) in backward states of the country. He made this announcement under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana, while admitting "people in underdeveloped states …
What kind of ripples were let loose by the breakdown of talks? Celso Amorim, Brazil's minister of external relations and leader of the G-22 group, felt that the lack of engagement (of developing nations) in the Singapore issues, which mirrored the lack of engagement (of the developed world) on agriculture, …
forty-year-old Nizamuddin couldn't have been struck down by malaria at a worse time. He is laid up at the Pokran primary health centre (phc) in Rajasthan's Jaisalmer district instead of tending bajra (millet) and guar (a legume) crops in his fields in Nananiya village. Sadly, a healthy monsoon
