JHABUA, India — Inside the drab district hospital, where dogs patter down the corridors, sniffing for food, Ratan Bhuria’s children are curled together in the malnutrition ward, hovering at the edge of starvation. His daughter, Nani, is 4 and weighs 20 pounds. His son, Jogdiya, is 2 and weighs only eight. Landless and illiterate, drowned by debt, Mr. Bhuria and his ailing children have staggered into the hospital ward after falling...
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Centre to use GIS to monitor rural job scheme
The Centre will now monitor the implementation of NREGA through Geographical Information System (GIS). The Ministry of Rural Development has constituted an expert group for developing a “strategic framework” with respect to the use of GIS under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, a Ministry official said on Thursday. The 16-member expert group will be headed by Secretary in the Rural Development Ministry, BK Sinha. A representative from the Indian Space...
More »The Empire strikes back — and how! by P Sainath
The original report on ‘paid news' of the Press Council of India sub-committee is relegated to the archive. Then too, it does not even appear on the PCI's website. Presented with a chance to make history, the Press Council of India has made a mess instead. The PCI has simply buckled at the knees before the challenge of “Paid News.” Its decision of July 30 to sideline its own sub-committee's report...
More »Solar power lights up 10 Karnataka villages
Plagued by power shortage but determined to find a way out, 10 villages in Karnataka have switched to solar power. Kerosene lamps and ‘chullahs’ are now things of the past. Anitha Pailoor documents this journey from darkness to light.d to light It’s half past eight in a tiny village called Neeralakatti, 15 km from Dharwad where Mangala is sitting at home, busy grading farm-picked brinjals as she has to send...
More »Population Research Presents a Sobering Prognosis
With 267 people being born every minute and 108 dying, the world’s population will top seven billion next year, a research group projects, while the ratio of working-age adults to support the elderly in developed countries declines precipitously because of lower birthrates and longer life spans. In a sobering assessment of those two trends, William P. Butz, president of the Population Reference Bureau, said that “chronically low birthrates in developed countries...
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