-The Times of India Ajab (Junagadh): Forty-year-old farmer Mahesh Ratanpara, a resident of Ajab village, 45km from Junagadh town, has decided to switch to organic farming. In fact, this year he has not used a drop of chemical-based pesticide in his 22-bigha farm. He is not the only one to have decided to switch to organic farming. At least 102 other farmers from the village with population of over 9,000, have decided...

-The Hindu The restrictions on private vehicle usage may have got most of the media coverage, but are by no means the only steps the government has announced. Nationally, over 35 per cent of urban households own a motorised two-wheeler and just under 10 per cent own a car, jeep or van. In Delhi, where per capita incomes are among the highest in the country, these proportions are much higher: nearly 40...

-The Hindu Business Line Girls start self-help groups in Uttar Pradesh's Amethi and Sultanpur districts to address sanitation issues Combining Self-Help Groups (SHGs) with sanitation programmes is a model that is working well in villages of Amethi and Sultanpur districts of Uttar Pradesh. While the old concept of SHGs was thrift and economic empowerment of women, the more recent formation of young women’s SHGs has strengthened the movement for toilets and sanitary napkins....

-Economic and Political Weekly The data from the Rapid Survey on Children conducted in 2013-14, released after an inexplicable delay and still in a summary fashion, show some but patchy progress between 2005-06 and 2013-14 in maternal and child health indicators. A preliminary analysis indicates that in those areas where special efforts were made, such as in increasing institutional delivery and expanding immunisation coverage, some results are seen. This calls for...

-Livemint.com In 1986, Italian journalist Carlo Petrini was outraged when McDonald’s opened its first outlet in Rome. He saw this as a threat to Italy’s culinary culture. He led a protest against the global industrialization of food, which culminated in the slow food movement. Starting in Rome, the movement is now a worldwide phenomenon. Edited excerpts from an interview at the Indigenous Terra Madre in Shillong: * What are the key achievements...