-Down to Earth   People of West Bengal's Sunderbans region are setting up grain banks to safeguard against food crisis Subedan Bibi's mud hut is a few metres from the banks of the Bakchara river, a distributary of the Hugli in Sunderbans region of South 24 Parganas. When the river is in spate she and most others of Goyadham village move to the main market in the nearby block. "Floods and storms destroy...

-The Hindu   Chennai (Tamil Nadu): The influx of visitors from the north-eastern regions and States such as Odisha, where malaria is endemic, is a cause for concern to public health officials. The State has been registering a gradual drop in malarial cases since 2010 but it will be several years before the disease is taken off the list of public health problems. The theme for this year's World Malaria Day, observed on...

-The Hindu   Chennai: Nature, in its generosity, must have said: "Let a thousand seeds grow on the humble stalk", as far as millets are concerned. These Forgotten Foods, which Navdanya has ceaselessly worked at bringing back to the food basket for the past 25 years, are indeed superstars of our agriculture. Though they need very little pampering, being water prudent and growing in the hardiest terrain, they yield the maximum nutrition per...

-Down to Earth   All safe motherhood programmes of the government are focused on institutional deliveries, but health centres are in disarray. Experts suggest ways to reduce deaths during delivery Lal Mohan, a daily wage labourer, has no clue what took his wife's life. Sarita Devi, 25, was expecting her third child, and was on way to a good hospital at Bhagalpur district in Bihar. "She was normal all through the nine months...

-The Indian Express   The southern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala also figure prominently in the list. The year before the Lok Sabha elections, 2013, saw communal rioting incidents in the country jumping by nearly 25 per cent, with Uttar Pradesh, which witnessed major religious clashes in Muzaffarnagar, being the worst affected with 247 incidents compared to 118 in 2012. Data from the Union home ministry (MHA) shows that states such as UP,...