-Down to Earth An earlier report had said that India accounts for the maximum number of maternal deaths in the world — 17 per cent or nearly 50,000 of the 289,000 The number of women dying during pregnancy, childbirth or within six weeks after birth has fallen by 44 per cent since 1990, say United Nations agencies, including the World Bank. A recently-released report has said that maternal deaths around the world dropped...

-The Guardian A not-for-profit group of small-scale farmers in India is succeeding where others have failed &NDAsh; what is the Fair Trade Alliance Kerala doing right? A walk through the annual Kerala seedfest, in the sultry heat of India’s Western Ghats, is like a walk through a proverbial garden of Eden; okra the size of a hand; deep purple coloured runner beans; 26 varieties of chillies from one village alone....

-Financial Express The country must double its support to farmers, from the current levels of about 6-8% of the value of agri-output It was in the mid-1980s that the ‘India-Bharat’ phraseology was fist pushed into political jargon, by farmers’ leader Sharad Joshi, with ‘India’ representing the urban elite of the country and ‘Bharat’ synonymous with its neglected rural folk. Joshi, at the time, was leading lakhs of farmers protesting against anti-farmer policies,...

-Down to Earth The rate at which informal housing is being destroyed probably far exceeds the rate at which formal housing is being constructed Troubled by the degradation of environment on and around railway tracks, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) recently directed Delhi government to relocate all illegal settlements along tracks in Delhi. The tribunal reasoned that the residents of these settlements practise open defecation and litter on the tracks. Housing of the...

-Economic and Political Weekly The platform known as the JAM Trinity (an acronym for Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar and mobile numbers) may enable a shift from the current Public Distribution System, based on price subsidies, to the direct transfer of benefits. However, it is incorrect to argue that JAM technologies will necessarily lead to the demise of the PDS. State-level experiences of computerisation, recounted here, reveal that the same technologies can...