-TheAlternative.in Over 600 million Indians have no access to toilets - if you line up the countries where open defecation is practised, India leads and also has more than twice the number as the next 18 countries with no access to toilets. The proportion is worse in rural India - where 68% of rural households don't have their own toilets (Source:NSSO, WHO). Why is open defecation an issue? Open defecation has been linked...
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Japanese biopiracy of our Ballia barley-Latha Jishnu
-Down to Earth Japan's Sapporo brewery patents Indian barley gene without giving benefit to farmers Ballia district, the easternmost part of Uttar Pradesh, is a flood-prone area that extends towards Bihar from the confluence of the Ganga and the Ghaghra. Over decades, its farmers, mostly marginal and small, have been cultivating barley, exchanging its seeds, improving the varieties and giving these to a government project to cull the best of the lot....
More »Steps to improve Healthcare in Rural India
-Press Information Bureau (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare) Healthcare for all, particularly for the rural areas has been a priority for the Government. The health indicators like Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), Total Fertility Rate (TFR), and nutritional status of children under 3 years including prevalence of anemia amongst them and pregnant women in rural area are considerably poor as compared to urban areas. The key health indicators are as under: Public...
More »The battle for water-Brahma Chellaney
-The Hindu With the era of cheap, bountiful water having been replaced by increasing supply-and-quality constraints, many international investors are beginning to view water as the new oil There is a popular, tongue-in-cheek saying in America - attributed to the writer Mark Twain, who lived through the early phase of the California Water Wars - that "whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over." It highlights the consequences, even if...
More »Used or misused, the MPs’ funds -Shyamlal Yadav
-The Indian Express Starting today, The Indian Express tracks how MP Local Area Development funds have been spent in various districts, based on third-party audits. Last month, Rahul Gandhi said in Sevagram, Maharashtra, that half the country's MPs want their local area development (MPLAD) scheme to end. "If you ask MPs, at least 50 per cent of them will tell you put an end to this scheme because... the scheme does not...
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