As government, corporates seek to engage with NGOs, they gain new significance Brave NGO World?     * The Planning Commission is courting NGOs for policy inputs, views on how to make plans work     * NGOs and local activism forced govt to stall Vedanta, Posco plans     * NGO opposition to snacks being served in schools changed plans to scrap hot meals     * NGO have made the government rethink the Polavaram dam project    ...

It is unbelievable but true! More than 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. One child dies of hunger-related causes every five seconds, taking a toll on 16,000 poor hungry children each day. More than 1.4 billion people live at poverty line or below. According to a the World Bank report, there are over 1,345 million poor people in developing countries who...

The country's most ambitious medical study to count the number of people with diabetes has found 44 lakh people with the condition in Maharashtra. The study's first phase also found another 69 lakh people with pre-diabetes living in the state. Roughly, Maharashtra has as many people with diabetes as Mumbai's population of 1.2 million during the 2001 census. India has been infamously called the world's diabetes capital on the basis of...

I remember being disturbed enough to stop watching the 2003 Hindi movie Matrubhumi(motherland). Set in the future, it depicted an Indian village populated only by men. It gets that way after a man, yearning for a boy, publicly drowns his newborn girl in a vat of milk, sparking a custom that wipes out women. So the men watch porn, fornicate with farm animals. A father marries his five sons to...

Girl child survival is skewedeven in those areas of northern India having limited access topublic health facilities and modern ultrasound technology asfamilies ''neglect'' them to ensure there are few survivors,says a new study. Since families can not know the sex of the foetus dueto lack of technology, girls born in these areas facesystematic healthcare neglect, specially in poorer communitiesto ''dispose them off'', says the study. Allowing the umbilical cord of the newly...