Difficult times call for difficult measures. Pushed into a corner by an unsustainable fiscal deficit and various sectors and programs (including the proposed food security legislation) screaming for a greater share of the budget pie, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in India has been forced to do what it might not have otherwise—reduce its marquee job guarantee scheme’s allocation in a big way for the first time.  In one...

Clinging on to their cultural moorings are monks from Assam's Majuli islands who were forced to relocate in the 1970s With land swallowed by the Brahmaputra, many monasteries of Assam's Majuli island were relocated to the mainland in the Seventies. The lives of the monks have never been the same. Indrakanta Mahanta, the head of the Vaishnava sattra (monastery), Bogi Ai, can't remember when somebody last asked him about Majuli. And there...

-The Business Standard It is not in the interest of food companies to advertise what their products contain, but it is in our interest to know Junk food is junk by its very definition. But how bad is it and what is it that companies do not tell people about this food? This is what the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) laboratory checked. The results were both predictable and alarming....

The few villages in Adilabad district that remain difficult to access even now are the ones that give a ray of hope where health is concerned in the agency areas here. Much of tribal traditions with respect to agriculture and food habits can be seen in original form in these habitations as they were left untouched by developments elsewhere. Seasonal and viral diseases account for death of scores of tribal people...

-Reuters   PERLE: As a shiny red harvester bounces across the black earth into the first row of sugar cane, excited schoolchildren run after it and several dozen men stand gaping in the wake of its swift progress. It's the first time that Perle, a village on the banks of the Krishna river in Maharashtra state, has seen a machine used for cutting the tough cane. "This machine will harvest my entire field today,"...