-The Hindu   Salt workers toil under inhuman conditions to create the ingredient that converts a tasteless lump of calories into consumable tasty food Salt has played an iconic role in our freedom struggle, symbolised by the great salt satyagraha of 1933, led by Mahatma Gandhi at Dandi. Every child in India knows about this but how many know that a similar satyagraha was led in the Madras Presidency (now Tamil Nadu) by...

-PSainath.org   The adivasi women of Edamalakudi, Kerala's remotest panchayat, have formed a headload workers' group, helped LIGht up their villages with solar power, and practice group farming in wild elephant territory. All are Muthavan tribals. Almost all are members of Kerala's extraordinary anti-poverty and gender justice movement - Kudumbashree. They are also neighbours of Chinnathambi, the keeper of the Wilderness Library. When 60 women in Edamalakudi carried about a hundred solar...

-The Times of India   CHENNAI: The Chennai Corporation is aiming for a clean sweep to tackle problems of female hygiene and access to sanitation - special 'She Toilets' have been planned for women in 348 locations across the city and will be opened by the end of the year. They will also be the first e-toilets (electronic, fully automated toilets) in the city. The toilets will have sanitary napkin vending machines...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The Drought-Prone Areas Programme and the Desert Development Programme launched by the Government of India during the 1970s used rainfall and irrigation as the two criteria to ameliorate the impact of drought in the targeted districts. This article revisits the eLIGibility criteria in LIGht of the recent climatic classification and irrigation statistics. B Venkateswarlu (vbandi_1953@yahoo.com), B M K Raju, K V Rao and C A Rama Rao are...

-The New Indian Express   Back in 1989, the area near Chennakothapalli village of Anantapur (the second driest area in India) in Andhra Pradesh was a wasteland. Till C K Ganguly (Bablu) and Mary Vattamattam chanced upon it in 1991 and saw its immense potential to blossom into a green paradise. The couple, along with friend John D'Souza, then bought 32 acres of this barren land. Inspired by Japanese author Masanobu Fufuoka's seminal...