-Agence France-Presse Nekpur: With both hands holding the basket of human excrement on her head, widowed grandmother Kela walks through a stream of sewage, up a mound of waste and then dumps the filth while cursing. "Nobody even pays us a decent wage!" she spits as she rakes mud and rubbish over her newly deposited pile, one of several she drops in the course of her working day cleaning toilets as a...

-The Hindustan Times Children’s Day coinciding with Diabetes Day now has an ominous ring to it. One in every four children under 18 being diagnosed with diabetes in urban India has type-2 diabetes, which typically affects only adults in their 50s and 60s and is caused by an unhealthy lifestyle. Five years ago, adult-onset diabetes affected one in 10 children diagnosed with the disease, while almost no cases were reported a...

-The New York Times blog You could be pardoned for thinking that light pollution is someone’s idea of a Diwali joke. With concerns about rising air pollution hanging over India’s capital like the thick blanket of smog that appeared a few weeks ago and activists against noise pollution jostling to be heard over the burst of holiday firecrackers, the relatively benign problem of light pollution may not seem too important. But astronomers in...

-Frontline There are no effective vaccines against Japanese encephalitis, but its spread can be controlled in India through vector management.  JAPANESE ENCEPHALITIS, or JE, has become endemic in many parts of the country, occurring repeatedly in epidemic form in many of them—for instance, in parts of Gorakhpur in northern Uttar Pradesh. One can expect JE-type epidemics year after year in States where prolonged drought-like conditions are followed by heavy monsoons. This leads to...

-The Hindu Children in the age group of 15 to 18 find it difficult to re-enrol into school Thirteen-year-old Afroze of Yeshwanthpur dropped out of school when he was eight and finds it difficult to leave his job and get back to school. Nevertheless, with some counselling and parental support, he can probably get back to school as he is less than 14. However, a survey conducted in July by Child Rights and...