-The Times of India NAGPUR: Almost 50% of women in Borgaon Gondi, a tribal village in Wardha district, are anaemic. This is not because of poverty or non-availability of nutritious food. Most farmers in the village own 2-5 acres land except a few who own above 50 acres. It is sheer ignorance about what to eat and the general neglect of women and children that are the main causes. However, there is...

-The Telegraph Guwahati: A survey on women drug users in the Northeast has found that a majority of them were unaware of the perils of sharing needles to inject drugs. The study was commissioned by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) under its regional initiative. Termed Prevention of Transmission of HIV Amongst Drug Users in SAARC Countries, the initiative was in response to the gap of knowledge regarding women...

-Economic and Political Weekly While the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act 2001 is a progressive piece of legislation that recognises farmers' rights to seed, it demands payment of an annual maintenance fee by the farmers to protect the varieties which they have been cultivating and conserving for years, only because these varieties have been brought under legal protection through national legislation. Parameswaran Prajeesh (prajeesh@mssrf.res.in) is a researcher with the...

The India Country Report 2015 on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) comes at a time when the Union Budget 2015-16 allegedly cut expenditure on several social sector schemes and programmes. This year's MDG country report says that India will fail to achieve two important targets pertaining to reducing hunger and maternal mortality by 2015, among others. Released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), the report says that India is...

-The Indian Express A few years ago I met a woman, let's call her Chandibai, in a village outside Udaipur. A former panchayat member, she was now a leader in her village - a person to whom others (particularly other women) turned for help. She wore her mobile on a cord around her neck and had the panchayat president, the village development officer and even the district collector's office on speed...