-The Indian Express Steel minister Beni Prasad Verma has cautioned environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan against holding up clearances for SAIL’s iron ore mines in Orissa and Jharkhand, saying this would force the state-owned steel giant to scale down operations and could stoke Naxal activity in the tribal region. Verma’s November 30 missive to Natarajan comes close on the heels of SAIL’s top brass sounding the alarm on the delays in environmental clearance...
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Condom use dips in 22 states, sets off population spurt alarm -Kounteya Sinha
-The Times of India Condom use among men in India is falling drastically — a dangerous trend for the country's already swelling population. The Union health ministry has found that out of 34 states, 22 states have recorded a major dip in condom use in 2010-11 as against the previous year. The five states with the highest overall dip in condom use has been the Andaman and Nicobar islands (50%), Madhya Pradesh (39%),...
More »Child mortality: Rates of concern -TK Rajalakshmi
-Frontline A JOINT study by the UNICEF and the National Institute of Medical Statistics (a division of the Indian Council of Medical Research) on the levels, trends and determinants of infant and under-five mortality has concluded that at the current pace, India is unlikely to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets or the child survival goals of the Twelfth Plan. This, despite there being a consistent decline in the infant...
More »At 3 crore rural accounts, banks set global record
-The Financial Express The banking sector has opened over three crore accounts in rural India as part of their financial inclusion drive. Compared to the number of rural households in the country of over 22 crore this is about 13 per cent. The government data upto March 31, 2012 also shows the extent to which the banking sector has to stretch to make the Aadhaar programme a success. The Aadhaar roll out of...
More »Keeper of grains-Jyotika Sood
-Down to Earth An ecologist has been guarding seeds of more than 750 rare rice varieties for over a decade Lit by a kerosene lamp, the two-room hut just outside a sleepy hamlet in Odisha’s Rayagada district can easily pass off as any other farmer’s house in this tribal region. Step inside it, and one is taken aback by the hundreds of earthen pots labelled with coded stickers stacked in a corner...
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