With 21% of its population undernourished, nearly 44% of under-5 children underweight and 7% of them dying before they reach five years, India is firmly established among the world's most hunger-ridden countries. The situation is better than only Congo, Chad, Ethiopia or Burundi, but it is worse than Sudan, North Korea, Pakistan or Nepal. This is according to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) which combines the above three indicators...

-PTI As the Centre plans to discuss the possibility of inclusion of Jarawa tribes of Andaman and Nicobar Islands into the mainstream, tribal rights body ‘Survival International' on Saturday said such steps would prove to be a disaster. “Any attempt to keep the Jarawas in the mainstream by force would be a disaster,” the London-based Survival said in a statement on Saturday. “Forcibly assimilating tribal people into national society has been viewed as...

Agriculture sector undergoes a historic change as livestock surpasses the economy of food grain Policy makers in India are finally acknowledging a structural shift in the agriculture sector they have been noticing for a decade. Economic contribution of livestock is today more than that of food grain crops. Traditionally, of the three components of the sector—crops, livestock and fisheries—crops drove the growth, and food grains are a major part of it....

-PTI The United Nations and leading world organizations celebrated India’s first polio free year and termed it as a major milestone in their fight against this dreaded DISEase. The World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan, termed it as the “greatest public health achievement” of India, the Bill Gates, of Bill and Milinda Gates Foundation described it as a major milestone in the global fight against polio. “This is a major milestone in...

-Reuters India is about to hit a milestone in its battle to eradicate the polio virus with no new cases reported in the past year, the country’s health minister said today, a dramatic drop from being the country worst-affected by the crippling DISEase. The last case was detected on January 13 in a two-year-old girl in Howrah. A full year without any new cases means India will no longer be classed as “polio-endemic”...