-The Hindu The rate of handwashing shot up from just one per cent to 37 per cent in just six months One of effective public health interventions and the most elementary hygiene ritual - washing hands - can help prevent diarrhoea that annually kills 8,00,000 children aged below five years. Yet, surveys show that handwashing remains at best "suboptimal" across the world, whether in India, Ghana, China - or even in parts...

-Deccan Herald Behind all the ostentation, glitz and glamour of the recently concluded mega ‘Progressive Agriculture Summit' in Punjab lies the harsh reality of farmer suicides and the burgeoning agrarian crisis that this border state reels under. A state government commissioned study conducted by three prominent universities in Punjab lay bare the magnitude of the crisis. On an average estimate, three persons committed suicide every two days in last one decade in...

-The New York Times BOLLIKUNTA, India - Latha Reddy Musukula was making tea on a recent morning when she spotted the money lenders walking down the dirt path toward her house. They came in a phalanx of 15 men, by her estimate. She knew their faces, because they had walked down the path before. After each visit, her husband, a farmer named Veera Reddy, sank deeper into silence, frozen by some terror...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: For a country which till recently had a weak civil society movement, India is now witnessing a boom in the NGO sector. With a population of 1.2 billion, the country could well be the land of opportunities for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with the Central Bureau of Investigation conservatively estimating 20 lakh of them already operating in states and union territories. The mind-boggling figures boil down to...

-Press Information Bureau (Ministry of Agriculture) The Government formulated a Model Act on Agri-Marketing reform in 2003 and Model Rules in 2007. The Government has since been pursuing the State Governments to adopt the Model Act and Rules. The Model Act inter-alia provides for alternative models through which farmers can access larger markets viz. setting up of markets in private and cooperative, contract farming, farmer consumer market and direct marketing. License...