Union ministers may be squabbling heatedly over whether the moratorium on Bt Brinjal was right or wrong, but trade associations related to soya, a commodity which has been virtually swamped by the GM variety worldwide, are clear that the growing agri-biotech bandwagon has opened up immense new opportunities for safer, traditional, non-GM soya varieties. The Soy Food Promotion and Welfare Association announced the launch of a two day International Soy...

India has notified education as a fundamental right for all children between 6 and 14 years, enabling them and their parents to legally demand Schooling from the government for the academic session beginning April 1. Eight years after Parliament amended the Constitution recognising education as a fundamental right, the government has finally notified the amendment and a law was passed last year to make the right a reality. The notification,...

The study was conducted in six States and is based on interviews of over 51,000 individuals  Findings also underscore the limited awareness on most sexual and reproductive matters Leading sources of information on sexual matters were friends and the media Less than one in three women know that a condom can be used just once, and just one in six know that a condom cannot disappear into a woman’s body. These are...

Likely to be rolled out gradually, in 3 to 6 months from now  Once fully implemented, the scheme may touch the lives of 20 crore women “Highly subsidised” sanitary napkins will be supplied to women above poverty line To boost female health and hygiene in rural India, the Union government is working on a scheme to provide women living below poverty line (BPL) with free sanitary napkins. The scheme, which will eventually...

Monica Das Gupta is a senior social scientist at the World Bank. Her field research in Punjab, when she was at the National Council of Applied Economic Research, established that sex differentials in child mortality in rural Punjab persisted despite relative wealth, socio-economic development including rapid universalization of female education, fertility decline, and mortality decline. Amartya Sen’s writings drew attention to female foeticide and infanticide in Asia that led to...