35.4 p.c. families walk more than half a kilometre for precious liquid The State's much-hyped development through industrialisation seems to have brought little qualitative change in lives of people in rural regions. If one goes through figures of the house-listing and housing census-2011, the statement holds true. The census finds increase in number of families those walk more than half kilometre distance to fetch drinking water during past one decade. According to the...

World Water Day is held annually on March 22 to focus attention on the importance of freshwater and advocate sustainable management of freshwater resources. Each year, the day highlights a specific aspect of freshwater and this year's campaign was on “Water and Food Security.” A large quantity of water, more than most people think, is used for producing the food we eat everyday. Water is a renewable and finite resource...

The great poverty debate has been re-ignited, pitting liberal, pro-market economists against left-of-centre economists of the JNU genre. Is the Tendulkar Committee's poverty line - expenditure of 32 a day in urban areas and 26 in rural areas -an affront to the poor, an estimate that could only have been made by a committee whose members had never known a day's poverty themselves? Or is it a realistic estimate of what...

Tobacco-related cancers and cervical cancers caused most cancer deaths Cancer killed 5,56,400 people across the country in 2010. The 30-69 age group accounted for 71 per cent (3,95,400) of the deaths. In 2010, cancer alone accounted for 8 per cent of the 2.5 million total male deaths and 12 per cent of the 16 million total female deaths in this age group. These are some of the findings of a paper published...

India, like other Asian countries, has focused its climate change adaptation strategies on rural and urban areas while neglecting the urban fringes, say experts. Peri-urban areas are characterised by haphazard, accelerated expansion and are farthest from basic urban services and infrastructure, according to United Nations-Habitat’s ‘The State of Asian Cities 2010-11’. By 2020, of the projected 4.2 billion urban population of the world, 2.2 billion will be living in Asia, many...