-The Hindu     The acute shortage of toilets across the country has come to the fore again with the gang-rape and murder of two teenage Dalit girls in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh who went missing on the night of May 27th after they went to relieve themselves in the open because they did not have access to a toilet at home. The lack of toilets impacts the safety of women and this had been...

-The Pioneer   Bhubaneswar: Home is an integral part of life and determinant of standard of living and progress of society. Rural Odisha witnesses a very poor standard of habitation and lack of proper housing for lakhs of poor people who are dreaming of a house of their own to live with dignity. Socio-cultural barriers, landlessness and lack of credit for housing are some of the major reasons which deprive rural poor of...

-The Hindu GHUMNOOR (ADILABAD Dt.): In what could be the first step towards a welcome reversal of current farming practices in the Agency areas, a hotelier from Hyderabad, Ram Babu, has tied up with tribal farmers of Ghumnoor in Sirpur (U) mandal of Adilabad for the purchase of indigenous varieties of millets. Instead of sowing the vexatious Bt cotton, the farmers will now cultivate local varieties of foodgrains in a part of...

-The Hindu   It is creditable that Narendra Modi seeks inspiration for his growth model from China and Japan rather than the U.S., which is a high-cost, specialist-driven model The old adage ‘health is wealth' was given legitimacy by no less a personage than Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who in 2000, chaired the World Health Organization's Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (CMH). The CMH report brought forth indisputable evidence of the link between health,...

-NDTV   Nearly a third of adults and a quarter of children today are overweight, according to a report by the Global Burden of DISEase Study published in The Lancet medical journal. No country has turned the tide of obesity since 1980. Traditionally associated with an affluent lifestyle, the problem is expanding worldwide, with more than 62 percent of overweight people now in developing nations, said the report.  There are some 2.1 billion...