-The Hindu The Araku valley saw its first childbirth in a hospital, thanks to young nurses drawn from the tribes themselves On an ordinary workday, 27-year-old Pramila Bariki hikes up steep slopes, across fields, through ankle-deep rivulets, often walking up to 14 km. She gets a ride until the road is motorable, from which point she has to walk. Her job? She doles out healthcare advice to mothers and children in the remotest...

-Scroll.in They complain that the state treats ordinary villagers opposing mining in the Surjagarh forest no different than it does the Maoists. nestled deep in the Surjagarh forest of Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district, Gatta seems a serene village. Most people grow their rice, sell tendu leaves, celebrate with mahua and enjoy the lush overgrowth around them. But a closer look throws up a different picture. Reaching Gatta from Allapally, the nearest town in...

-The Times of India Many members of the Niti Aayog's newly constituted Working Group on Nutrition have significant conflicts of interests. Several are representatives of international agencies, which have close ties to multinational food companies including nestle, Hindustan Unilever, Coca Cola, Monsanto, Mars and Ajinomoto, and which have been pushing packaged therapeutic food to address malnutrition. The government has repeatedly clarified that packaged energy dense food is against India's policy on...

-The Indian Express They are on the roads and in the fields. Farmers are worried, as are MLAs. 13 years after its anti-cow slaughter Act, Madhya Pradesh struggles with stray cows nestled along a rocky hillock in Tikamgarh, this small village of about a thousand residents follows a fixed ritual at twilight. Before retiring for the day, the men of Dumbar herd cows wandering in the village’s lanes into a makeshift enclosure,...

-Frontline.in Recently released data from the CSO, which claimed that demonetisation had had no significant impact on the performance of the economy, raise more questions than provide answers. Official data released by the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) on the last day of February, which claimed that the national gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 7 per cent in the October-December period, the third quarter of 2016-17, came as a morale booster...