The Kerala government has decided to detoxify' Kasaragod district which has been bearing the brunt of indiscriminate spraying of the highly toxic endosulfan in cashew plantations for the last two decades. All highly toxic Red and Yellow categories of pesticides, including endosulfan, will be banned in the district and the soil and water bodies will be frequently monitored for pesticide content to enable remedial measures, state agriculture minister Mullakkara Retnakaran told...

A lot has been said and written about the visit of Barack Obama, the President of USA to India. The corporate media was in the usual over-enthusiastic drive to bring to its readers and viewers all minute details about his visit from where he stayed and what he ate to how many warships, planes and cars accompanied him and how a whopping $200 million was spent per day for the...

KEY TRENDS   • Maternal Mortality Ratio for India was 370 in 2000, 286 in 2005, 210 in 2010, 158 in 2015 and 145 in 2017. Therefore, the MMRatio for the country decreased by almost 61 percent between 2000 and 2017 *14    • As per the NSS 71st round, among rural females aged 5-29 years, the main reasons for dropping out/ discontinuance were: engagement in domestic activities, not interested in education, financial constraints and marriage. Among rural males aged...

The disastrous effect of the state throwing up its hands and retreating is most starkly visible in agriculture . Remember: agriculture involves 70 per cent of the country's population , generates about 56 per cent of national income, 64 per cent of total expenditure and about one third of total savings. So, any neglect translates into gigantic costs. And the central crisis in agriculture — production barely matching a depressed...

Independent India's greatest failing must be its inability to feed its people. With 42 per cent of all children malnourished, 56 per cent of women anaemic, and the country ranked 65th out of 84 countries on the Global Hunger Index, the report card of the state on nutrition must have an F. Most disturbing is the fact that things have got worse over time. In the first half of the...