An ongoing study on radiation from mobile towers and mobile phones at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has found that the exposure to radiation from mobile towers and mobile phones could have an adverse impact on male fertility and also pose health hazards by depleting the defence mechanism of cells. Though these findings are based on experiments on male rats, Jitendra Behari, a professor in JNU's School of Environmental Sciences and...

Adjuvants with severe physiological side effect have been administered to hundreds of children during vaccine trials conducted at a government hospital in Indore over the last few years, and that too without the approved Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). The trials conducted on at least 836 children at the Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalaya, the paediatric division of the Maharaja Yashwantrao Hospital, were spiked with adjuvants that contain high levels of mercury, aluminium,...

The Kisan Swaraj Yatra, a rally of farmers marching from Sabarmati in Gujarat to New Delhi, reached Jaipur on Thursday. Participants appealed to chief minister Ashok Gehlot to cancel the MoU that the state signed with Monsanto India Ltd, saying the agreement was anti-farmer. The Kheti Virasat Mission's Kavitha Kurunganti, who is among those leading the rally, claimed the government was surrendering famers' interests over seeds to profit-oriented multinational companies. The...

The issues relating to the victims of endosulfan, sprayed in the plantations of Kasargod district in Kerala, have snowballed once again. “Earthworms emerged from the soil, and, subsequently, died. Then birds came to eat the earthworms and they died as well.”   “Some termites were killed in a cotton farm sprayed with endosulfan. A frog fed on the dead termites, and was immobilised a few minutes later. An owl which flew over...

The pattern of land distribution has rendered rural landscape of UP disfavourable for farming. The precursor for this is the fragmentation of cultivable land into a large number of `small landholdings'. The process set under the demographic pressure, has caused marginalisation of a vast majority of farmers and posed a severe challenge to the prospects of rural economy and the growth of agriculture in future. Going by the official figure, UP...