The United Nations and its partners are promoting the use of all possible means of communication, including social networking, blogs and even flash mobs, to get the message out on the benefits of breastfeeding beyond clinics and delivery rooms to the wider public. Breastfeeding is directly linked to reducing the death toll of children under five, yet only 36 per cent of infants below the age of six months in developing...

The Right to Information Act was the great white hope of Indian citizens who are consistently denied rightful information. Not only does it specify that most information in the public domain would be provided to citizens by right, but it also ensured that failure to do so by the bloated bureaucracy would result in penalties for erring officials. Trust the government, though, to subvert its own good intentions. The state government has...

-IANS   With a spate of controversies and clashes over acquisition of farmland for private projects, the government Friday unveiled a draft bill to make the process transparent and equitable to all stakeholders, notably rural owners, with provisions not only for high compensation but also post-sale rehabilitation. The name: National Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011. The thrust of the draft is on compensation based on market value, not less than...

Community initiative tackles perennial problem of groundwater salinity In a rare community-driven initiative, the residents of a nondescript village near Deeg in Bharatpur district of Rajasthan have solved the perennial problem of groundwater salinity by laying a one-km cement pipeline to get the Yamuna river waters from a feeder canal situated nearby. The small Madhera village had been facing difficulty in getting clean and pure water for both drinking and irrigation for...

The rates of maternal and infant mortality have improved only marginally, according to the latest Sample Registration System. THE country's largest demographic sample survey, covering 1.4 million households and a population of 7.01 million, during the period 2007-09, says that there was only a mild improvement in the infant mortality rate (IMR) and the maternal mortality ratio (MMR). The findings of the latest Sample Registration System (SRS), an exercise which...