Spiralling prices of pulses have shown India’s dependence on imports. Pulses are integral to India’s diet but not its food policy. As a result, supply cannot meet demand. What are the consequences and solutions? Surendra Nath has switched to eating grass-pea, though he knows it is not good for health. But so is tobacco, he argues. He cannot do without pulses and pigeon-pea selling at Rs 100 a kg is beyond...

Unauthorized medical practitioners find business where Bihar’s health machinery deserts polio victims Two-year-old Khushi Kumari loves racing with her siblings and at the end of each run she gives out a hearty laugh. The only time she breaks into fits of inconsolable crying is when approached by a stranger. “She fears she would get injections again,” said her mother Dinapati Yadav of Haldichapra village in Patna district. “In September last year...

The government has decided to simplify the process of issuing disability certificates through a slew of steps that would among other things relieve disadvantaged people in rural areas of the trouble of making long, “cumbersome” trips. The social justice ministry has decided to let doctors at primary health centres issue disability certificates to those with visible handicaps such as blindness, amputations and paralysis of limbs. At present, a person with disabilities has...

The near total political paralysis of one of India's largest states, Andhra Pradesh, over its proposed carve-up, raises fresh questions about how the world's largest democracy will handle questions of identity and territory in this young century. Telangana, the new state proposed, is not a fresh demand, but even as it seems closer than ever to materialising, it opens a Pandora's box in a vast country of over a billion...

Sitting on an iron bench along a busy street, Chaman Lal sticks his fingers into a mug full of a greasy concoction and then applies the dark-red brew to areas where his patients complain of pain. Lal -- who does not have a license to practice medicine, but claims to be a successful bone doctor and traditional healer -- says this potion of 18 herbs is a cure-all. His large signboard,...