The lush green Indian state of Kerala, advertised in travel brochures as "God’s Own Country", is at the center of a continuing battle in the country to secure an early ban on the use of the pesticide endosulfan. The Kerala government and activists say the pesticide has caused 4,000 victims in the state, through cancer, crippled limbs and babies born with deformities; 496 related deaths have been officially recorded. No scientist,...

A LEAFY VILLAGE in Kerala, Pathanpara, never found access to India’s electricity grid. That is why for the last several years, this village has been generating its own electricity. Raju, a dhoti-clad cashew nut farmer, operates Pathanpara’s five kilowatt (KW) micro hydropower plant. He lives in the village and earns a salary of Rs 2,250, paid by the People’s Electricity Committee (PEC). The power generated is shared equally by the village,...

The head of the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) warned today that the “slow-motion catastrophe” of non-communicable diseases could overwhelm even the wealthiest nations if the root causes of the epidemic, mostly lifestyle decisions, are not addressed. Margaret Chan, the WHO Director-General, told delegates at the First Global Ministerial Conference on Healthy Lifestyles and Noncommunicable Disease Control in Moscow that the fact the many of the chronic non-communicable illnesses in...

China's population grew to 1.34 billion by 2010, according to census data, which showed an ageing and more urban population that experts say is likely to spur calls for the "one-child" policy to be relaxed. The census released on Thursday showed the population in China, the world's second biggest economy, grew by 5.84 percent from the 1.27 billion in the last census in 2000 and to a level that was smaller...

It was indeed an unusual ''social movement''. A group of ''activists'' who had banded together to draft one version of a bill that would establish a statutory institution to investigate corruption in the political establishment sits in protest demanding the acceptance and passage of its version of the bill. The protest has elements of a social drama inasmuch as it fronts an elderly leader, Anna Hazare, with Gandhian credentials, a...