-The Hindu Fine particulate matter from industries, cars and biomass causing premature mortality. Air pollution could have killed at least 600,000 Indians in 2012, a study conducted by the World Health Organisation and made public on Monday said. That is about a fifth of the 3 million who died worldwide because they were exposed to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) that may have aggravated or been directly responsible for cardiovascular diseases and lung cancer. India...

-The Indian Express Decentralised industrialisation, entrepreneurship from below have been absent in states that have seen recent unrest among agrarian communities. “The soil here is very saline with electrical conductivity value of 9. We can grow only chloride-loving crops like coconut and the MR-2 variety of mulberry.” That was Tamil Selvi, recently telling this correspondent about the 5.75-acre land farmed by her father Natarajan Gounder at Velayuthagoundanpudur, a small village around 25...

-The Indian Express Women continue to constitute 98 per cent of the sterilised population; this despite the fact that the procedure is less complicated for men. New Delhi: Even as the Health Ministry announced plans on Friday for a targeted population control programme in 145 high fertility districts, data from 2013 shows that nothing has changed since the deaths of 19 women in a sterilisation camp in Bilaspur in 2014. Women continue to...

-The Hindu Business Line Although literacy levels are improving, there’s not enough learning happening. This calls for urgent attention This year, marks the 50th year of International Literacy Day. In 1966, UNESCO declared September 8 as International Literacy Day to “mobilize the international community and to promote literacy as an instrument to empower individuals, communities and societies”. At Independence in 1947, India had a literacy rate of 12 per cent, which stands today...

-Hindustan Times BHOPAL: Shahdol and Hoshangabad in Madhya Pradesh have the highest percentage of over- and under-nourished children among 100 districts, according to an Annual Health Survey, which, experts said, needed further validation. With 31.3% over-nourished children under the age of five, Shahdol topped the Clinical, Anthropometric and Biochemical (CAB) survey 2014 done in 100 districts of nine states. The district-wise analysis of the CAB survey was released recently in the annual health...