Farmers in Maharashtra flock to 
a new breed of aggressive leaders Its name in Marathi means edge of the hill, but Dongarkada has no hill or mountain in its vicinity. What the village in Maharashtra's Hingoli district has is a cooperative sugar factory controlled by Congress leader Ashok Chavan. Though the Adarsh Housing Society scam rocked the state and forced him to resign as chief minister, the village remains loyal to...

Absence of preventive measures and affordable and accessible health care leads to nearly 500 encephalitis deaths in Uttar Pradesh. IT is a strange paradox. In a country that aspires to be a superpower and boasts of rapid economic growth, 488 children died in a State, Uttar Pradesh, from encephalitis alone this year. It is nothing less than a national shame and tragedy. In six districts of Bihar, close to 200 children...

Even as the world welcomed the seven billionth member of the global population this week, medical researchers warned that rapid-growth economies such as India still had a high proportion of morbidity, with more than 290 million Indians suffering from Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). In an article ‘A disproportionate burden of NTDs found in India and South Asia,' tropical diseases scientists said though India and South Asia had made significant economic progress,...

-The Hindu Business Line   Input subsidy expenses not contributing to boost productivity The World Bank has said that South Asia's foodgrain stock management, especially in India, needs to improve to tackle inflation. In its focus on food inflation in South Asia, the bank said that high stocks have led to high wastage due to inadequate storage capacity and technology. According to World Bank's estimates, the Food Corporation of India lost 10-16 million tonnes...

Genetically modified (GM) pest-resistant crops may not be the panacea they are made out to be, a new study shows, with specific reference to Bt cotton. The field trial by scientists in Nagpur shows that the soil the plants are grown in matters almost as much as insect-killing genes and pesticide sprays. The finding could significantly increase the amount of money farmers spend in buying and spraying pesticides. It could also mean...