-The Hindu Cases of acute encephalitis syndrome have seen a spike in Muzaffarpur this year, already claiming more than a hundred lives. Jacob Koshy reports on the appalling state of health care in Bihar, even as the debate on what is causing the deaths rages on For three days, Bihari Mahato and Shyam Babu Saha’s families have shared a hospital bed. The two daily-wage labourers, who have had to give up work...

-Deccan Chronicle Encephalopathy is a disease in which the functioning of the brain is affected. Whose children go to bed hungry? In a country with glaring social and economic disparities, hunger is a deeply political issue which many would like to dodge. But that is at the heart of the big story about the recent child deaths in Muzaffarpur, Bihar’s litchi growing belt. At the time of writing, more than 100 children are...

-Newsclick.in Women’s work participation has dramatically declined, unemployment is at an all-time high and they often get half the wage of what men get for same work, shows the latest labour force survey report. The recently released Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) for 2017-18 reveals a striking decline in women’s participation in the workforce. Only about 22% of women of working age (defined as 15 years of age or more) were gainfully...

In a recent blog post, Columbia University professor Arvind Panagariya mentions that the critics of the present Prime Minister of India failed to underscore ‘employment rate’ -- flip side of unemployment rate -- that stood at nearly 94 percent according to the report on Periodic Labour Force Survey 2017-18. A recent article by Dr. Vikas Rawal and Prachi Bansal, however, points out that in order to understand the problem of joblessness...

-The Hindu All it would have taken was to ensure that the children had a meal at night Along with my colleagues, I had investigated the so-called mystery disease in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, during its outbreak in 2012, 2013 and 2014. The local name for it was acute encephalitis syndrome, but we found that the disease was not encephalitis but encephalopathy. This distinction is important. Encephalitis results from a viral infection, unless proved...