-Economic and Political Weekly The importance of hand-washing in personal and public hygiene has evolved over the centuries. While the market with its countless number of soaps and hand-wash products for personal hygiene with the accompanying advertising has created a false sense of security, it is community hygiene implemented through public health measures that is really effective in the battle against disease. Lekha D Bhat (lekhabhatd@gmail.com) teaches at the Department of Social...

-IPSNews.net DHARNI (Maharashtra): In the semi-darkness of her hut in Berdaballa, a forest village 610 km northeast of Mumbai, 28-year old Babita Mavaskar sat with her newborn baby boy watching him checked by a paramedic in an important antenatal exam. After about 20 minutes the health worker emerged from the shelter and made a big announcement, “All is well. Everything, the weight, temperature and height … is normal.” The small crowd of...

-The Hindu Business Line A tribal woman shows farmers how to transform their lives by adopting efficient and environmentally friendly practices “I don’t know your name, Collector Sahib, but you are very welcome in our village,” says Leelaben Karsanbhai, 30. Like a seasoned speaker, she is addressing a meeting of 100-odd villagers and all the bada sahib who have descended on the tribal village of Katarvad, 130 km east of Vadodara, Gujarat,...

-The Times of India There has been a steady decline in India's overall sex ratio (SR) over the 20th century. The 1975 Report of the Committee of the Status of Women drew attention to the fact that while the 1901 census showed 972 females per thousand males, this had declined steadily to 946 in 1951, 941 in 1961, and 930 in 1971. The 1981 census, however, threw up a happy figure of...

-Frontline In Rajasthan, the abysmal state of school education has forced pupils, particularly girls, to come out in protest against the shortage of teachers and lack of infrastructure. IT was just over a year ago, on Gandhi Jayanti 2014, that girls of the senior secondary school of the town of Bhim in Rajasthan went on strike. The young, fresh-faced and neatly groomed girls were far removed from anyone’s idea of potentially rowdy...