Has Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), one of India’s best-known peoples’ movements, run out of steam? Or is it still relevant in its new avatar as a force to reckon with? After all, the NBA has failed to achieve its primary goal of blocking big dams on Narmada, including the Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat. The short answer to the question of NBA’s achievement is that it has forced a paradigm...
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GENDER
KEY TRENDS • Maternal Mortality Ratio for India was 370 in 2000, 286 in 2005, 210 in 2010, 158 in 2015 and 145 in 2017. Therefore, the MMRatio for the country decreased by almost 61 percent between 2000 and 2017 *14 • As per the NSS 71st round, among rural females aged 5-29 years, the main reasons for dropping out/ discontinuance were: engagement in domestic activities, not interested in education, financial constraints and marriage. Among rural males aged...
More »Patient Revolution by M Rajshekhar
The word ‘Mitanin’ was derived from a Chhattisgarhi custom, where a ‘mitanin’ is a girl bonded ceremoniously in her childhood to another girl as a lifelong friend IT IS quite common for tractors in rural India to haul all kinds of unusual cargo. Even then, a late night emergency shuttle, from a small home in Narayanpaal village in the backward Bastar district of Chhattisgarh, to ferry a pregnant woman in...
More »Kerala's paddy war by Shree Padre
Dr U Jaikumaran is breathless with excitement over the phone. “The next five days will be hectic and crucial in our war against hunger. We have to transplant rice on 300 acres in just five days.” Dr Jaikumaran, a professor at the Kerala Agriculture University (KAU), has been building a Food Security Army (FSA) – men and women in green uniforms organised into nine regiments and 24 battalions – who are...
More »What’s politics got to do with...? by Manoj Kumar
If your child can go from a ‘near zero’ learning ability to getting 95 per cent in mathematics and from a state of malnutrition to WHO-approved standards of health, chances are that you will not find the Naxal ideology all that attractive. I was in the Naxal heartland of Bastar to review the learning skills of children in 300 schools who were being educated by the Naandi Foundation when news...
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