By selectively borrowing habits from the West, the urban Indian has worsened his chances with cancer. Doctors say that while the city-bred Indian has willingly adopted a western diet, lapping up high-fat foods and shunning high-fibre content, he or she hasn't picked up the healthy western attitude of detecting and treating cancer early.  The end-result, as the India's Million Death Study (MDS) reported on Thursday shows, is that urban Indians are...

The change is accompanied by a significant geographical shift from the south and north-east to states in other parts of India such as Maharashtra, Bihar, Orissa and Rajasthan Marking a dramatic shift in the demographic profile of people with AIDS, migrant workers and their wives have emerged as a high-risk group (HRG) for contracting the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), with an infection rate surpassing that of injecting drug users, commercial sex...

-The Deccan Herald   Here drinking water too is a luxury   Diddalli is a small hamlet in Channayanakote Gram Panchayat limits, devoid of basic infrastructure facilities.  The labourers who planted teak wood trees under Neduthopu yojana of the forest department in Devamacchi forest in 1972, were shifted to Nagapura and Channayanakote in 1982. The forest department had earmarked two acre land for the labourers to settle down. However, Diddalli does not boast of anything...

Travelling in rural India always yields rich insights into how poor women struggle to provide that little extra, in terms of food, for the family meal. It was in the village of Vijaypura – in the drought prone Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh – that I came across Bharati, a 39-year-old farm woman and homemaker, working her everyday magic by laying out slices of potato and whole green chillies on the...

Punctuality audit ordered by the Chief Secretary of the Delhi government last year opened the Pandora’s Box on poor attendance records of government officials. Documents obtained under an RTI filed by Pratidhi show that nodal departments had large numbers of their staff members missing, on most surprise checks. Chief secretary P K Tripathi had ordered the audit last June after writing to heads of all departments that they must conduct at...