-The Times of India NEW DELHI: It is well known that quality of life greatly varies amongst different states within India. Some states have greater industrial or agricultural output, higher income levels, better educational and health indicators while others are still struggling with backwardness. But what is much less known is that within states too there are wide and astonishing variations. State level averages often hide huge and unconscionable disparity on...

-Live Mint At 287 million, India has 37% of the total population of illiterate adults across the world, according a Unesco report New Delhi: The world will miss its goal of universal education by 2015, with millions of children and adults still to be schooled, said a United Nations (UN) body. India has the highest population of illiterate adults, 287 million, 37% of the total population of such people across the world,...

-Grain.org "We take care of the cow and the cow takes care of us," says Marayal, a farmer in Thalavady, Tamil Nadu. Her two cows produce 6 to 10 litres of milk a day, which she sells for 30-40 cents per litre. Across India, there are millions of backyard dairy farmers like Marayal. Each owning just one or two cows, these farmers supply millions more families and hundreds of thousands of informal...

-Frontline The tussle within some Central government Ministries over proposed cuts in the budget for rural development schemes has affected a promise made to senior citizens. THEIR wizened faces said it all. Though there was disappointment, there was also a glimmer of hope that their trek to the national capital would not go in vain. For almost a month, senior citizens, most of them poor, had been pouring into New Delhi from...

-Down to Earth Faced with crop losses because of erratic rainfall and extreme weather, tribal farmers of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh turn to bewar and penda forms of cultivation that keeps them nourished all times of the year, but government agencies are bent on rooting out these farm practices Hariaro Bai Deoria should have been a worried person this year-an untimely spell of rain late last October flattened her paddy crop, and...