-The Times of India MUMBAI: A year ago, nothing could go wrong for 73-year-old Anna Hazare. The antigraft crusader's campaign attracted a groundswell from a disillusioned populace tired of corruption as a way of life. The movement succeeded in building Anna into a brand that millions of Indian consumers — most of them young and social media-savvy — bought into. A year down the line, that brand is frayed at the seams. The...

-The Hindu Literacy has helped people in the State maximise the benefits of the rural employment guarantee scheme Kerala’s achievements have long been celebrated by development economists — high literacy rates, including among girls, low infant mortality rates and so on. There has also been a spate of writings highlighting the ills of Kerala society. Critics have pointed to the high rates of suicides and feminists have also raised difficult questions. While...

-The Hindu After giving relatively good rains over large parts of the country over the past ten days, the south-west monsoon is all set to go into a lull for at least the next four to five days. Speaking to The Hindu , Director General of India Meteorological Department, L.S. Rathore said, “The axis of the monsoon is shifting close to the foothills of the Himalayas. Consequently, rains would be confined mainly...

-The Telegraph Guwahati: All is not lost for Majuli, although the island on the Brahmaputra in Jorhat district has lost enough already. Experts today said there was no danger of the island disappearing from the face of the earth completely, as new land masses were coming up. “It is true that the Brahmaputra has eroded a substantial portion of Majuli over the years, but historically, it is equally true that soil is getting...

-Down to Earth   Buy an Indian breed from Australia In June last year, we visited Malaysia on the invitation of the country’s oldest and most active consumer action group, The Consumer Association of Penang, to study the livestock production systems and to advise on how these can be transformed into more sustainable and less industrial farming systems. The past 40 years of aggressive industrial growth in Malaysia has seen small-scale peasant agriculture and...