-DNA   A poisoned country   A few weeks ago, India entered into an agreement with the UN to end the use of the insecticide DDT by 2020. DDT had been used in agriculture for decades until it was restricted in 1989, but 6,000 tonnes of DDT are still produced annually for the eradication of mosquitoes and other pests. This would be perfectly understandable, except for the simple fact that DDT has become...

-The Hindu Ramaswamy R. Iyer, a water policy expert who wrote extensively for The Hindu, saw Rivers as inextricable parts of the lives of communities. Ramaswamy R. Iyer passed away on September 9 in Delhi after a severe bout of viral fever. The water policy expert, who last held the position of an honorary research professor at the Centre for Policy Research, earlier served as Secretary of Water Resources in the Central...

-The Hindu District Mineral Foundations were set up to protect the interests of Adivasi communities who have borne the costs of mining. But they are flawed in their current form Through 2011-13, dogged investigators from the Justice M. B. Shah Commission on illegal mining toured the rust-red villages, forests and Rivers of northern Odisha, and trawled through reams of official records including from the environment, minerals, railways, and revenue departments. They met...

-The Times of India Samarin Bai, a 50-year-old Baiga tribal woman from Mahamai village lives in the dense Achanakmar forests of Bilaspur district, Chhattisgarh. A few days back, she decided to see a doctor for the big lump that had developed at the base of her neck and various other problems. Although there is a government sub-centre 6kmsix kilometers away, she knew that there was only one auxiliary nurse cum midwife...

-Livemint.com Water availability has not deteriorated only because of the poor monsoon Amartya Sen showed in his seminal work on famines that mass starvation is not necessarily the result of inadequate food supply. He opened up new areas of inquiry that focussed on what have come to be known as entitlement failures. Sen has famously argued that human mistakes forced people into starvation in Bengal in 1943 even though food production in...