VISHAL, the son of a farm labourer in the west Indian state of Maharashtra, is almost four. He should weigh around 16kg (35lb). But scooping him up from the floor costs his nursery teacher, a frail woman in a faded sari, little effort. She slips Vishal’s scrawny legs through two holes cut in the corners of a cloth sack, which she hooks to a weighing scale. The needle stops at...

Bhaggu, 65, says he can trace his memory back to when he was five. And he remembers the paradox that’s taunted him since: Of his village — Sohras, in northern Uttar Pradesh — being flooded every year and him having no water to drink. “They (government) distribute food, tarpaulin, kerosene, matchboxes but never made any arrangement for water,” says Bhaggu, a farm worker who goes by one name. “I think no...

Trade unions and labour rights activists blame the high suicide rate in Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, on the practices of the garment industry. TIRUPUR has carved out a niche for itself in the world of garments. Its phenomenal growth in the highly competitive global scenario, particularly in the past two decades, has been made possible by the entrepreneurial spirit of its manufacTurers and exporters and the sweat and labour of thousands of...

40 farmers of Simaldih village, located around three kilometres from Dhanbad railway station are facing drought for 10 years as 25 acres of their fertile land has Turned barren. The villagers alleged that a large drain connected to the Central Hospital of Bharat coking coal Limited (BCCL) has Turned their land infertile. The villagers said that the chemical waste from the drain directly fall on their land. A few years ago...

While global food prices declined for the first half of this year, they have spiked in recent months, according to a new World Bank publication, and this volatility could in Turn push up the local food prices of the world's poorest and most malnourished countries. The Bank's grain price index had declined by 16 percent over the first six months of 2010 before rising that same amount between mid-June and August....