-Hindustan Times Ludhiana: Like every year, the farmers in the district have started burning stubble despite ban on such a practice. The agricultural experts and officials have been appealing to the farmers to avoid this practice but the farmers seem to be least concerned about it. Stubble burning can be noticed round the clock at every rural pocket of the district. According to the experts, it not only depletes the soil health but...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The average protein intake of a person through normal diet has dipped 6-10% in the past two decades with almost 80% of rural population and 70% of urban people not getting the government-designated 2,400kcal per day worth of nutrition, latest data shows. Comparative estimates drawn by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) reveal that in urban areas the gap in nutrition intake...

-The Hindu Gajendra Singh Rajput from Dausa. Hargovind Harane from Vidarbha . Gosai Patra from Bardhaman. Why did these farmers take their own lives? In the light of the burning issue of farmer suicides across the country, A.R. Vasavi looks at the plight of the marginalised cultivator. Basamma and her ailing husband have carried and spread their five sacks of ragi (finger millet) from their half-acre plot to the local tar road...

-The Hindu A study shows that Indians are not immune to health consequences of smoking and that smokers have a higher death rate than non-smokers. Recently, a parliamentary committee declined to extend the size of health warnings on cigarette packets due to lack of independent evidence on the health impacts of smoking on the Indian population. A longitudinal study conducted by the National Council of Applied Economics (NCAER) and University of Maryland shows that in...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre plans to change the criteria for selecting the beneficiaries of its rural housing scheme for the poor, dropping the earlier poverty-list-based method for one that uses a points system based on the ongoing caste census. The government believes the proposed reform will achieve better targeting by including deserving families left out of the below-poverty-line (BPL) list, but critics feel it would leave a huge number of...