-The Hindu In addition to ailments caused by poverty, salt pan workers across the country suffer from several occupational diseases, including chronic dermatitis, loss of vision and hypothyroidism In Adivasi Colony, a remote hamlet off the road from Vedaranyam to Kodikarai in Tamil Nadu, most of the adults in the 200-odd households work in salt manufacturing. They prepare salt pans manually, irrigate them with saline water which is three times saltier than...

-The United Nations From Ethiopia and Yemen to Bolivia and Viet Nam millions of children are today taking part in the sixth annual United Nations-backed Global Handwashing Day, driving home the message that the simple use of soap and water can slash highly preventable diarrhoeal diseases that kill 1,400 children under five every day. "Washing hands before eating and after defecation drastically reduces the spread of diarrhoeal disease and has far reaching...

-The Business Standard A study finds migration doesn't lead to child labour; it impacts the education of child migrants Migration has helped rural incomes and, to a certain extent, agriculture. Typically, migrants from rural areas are short-term migrants. Often, adult migrants take their children with them, and this leads to the overall picture being distorted. A 2010 study on the impact of short-term - often as short as a month - migration on...

-The Telegraph The human resource development ministry today rejected a demand by two state education ministers that the Centre frame a national policy prescribing a uniform salary structure for schoolteachers in states and rules for recruiting them. At a meeting of the Central Advisory Board of Education, the highest advisory body on education that has state education ministers as members, Chhattisgarh's Brijmohana Agrawal and Bihar's P.K. Shahi said the HRD ministry should...

-The Business Standard The Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellows are being pampered with funds to serve for just two years   The Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellows scheme, announced two years ago, sounded like a novel way to connect educated youth to the problems of backward rural areas hit by Maoist violence. But it is now surrounded by questions as its financial size is now larger than the problem it seeks to solve...