India has recorded its first case of polio caused by a vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) this year in a five-month-old child in Murshidabad district of Bengal but the country remains free of the wild poliovirus. A polio surveillance laboratory in Calcutta has found that the child from Lalbag block in Murshidabad was infected by VDPV, which occurs when the weakened virus in the oral polio vaccine (OPV) mutates over time, and regains...

Rural women entrepreneurs in Rajasthan produce a nutritious food supplement as take home rations for pregnant mothers and underfed infants   There is very little that distinguishes the hamlet of Madri from the innumerable others that dot southern Rajasthan. This is a region where the Aravallis make their presence felt in gnarled hillocks, where water is scarce and where the land yields its harvests grudgingly. People here, including toddlers, know well the edge...

Interventions aimed directly at children — providing free textbooks, uniforms and addressing out of school children – account only for 6 per cent of the total investment in elementary education. The largest investment — 78 per cent — of the education budget in India is invested in teachers and management costs while the next largest spending, to the tune of 14 per cent, is done on creating school infrastructure. Only...

-The Hindu   The Rajasthan Cabinet on Monday put its seal of approval on a controversial decision to give khatedari rights to over 30,000 farmers occupying the custodian land in Alwar, Bharatpur, Hanumangarh and Sriganganagar districts, vacated mostly be those driven out of the State during the Partition, by paying a nominal regularisation fee. The farmers, whose ancestors were allotted the custodian land, were earlier required to pay 25 per cent of the...

Hydropower projects in tribal Kinnaur and Lahaul-Spiti district are witnessing stiff opposition from local residents. But their protests are going unheard due to lack of political will. Tribals are up in arms to save their fertile lands and natural source of irrigation, but their concerns have gone unheard in government corridors, as the state government is approving projects one after another in tribal areas. On Friday, over 200 residents of Tindi...