-The Hindu Bengaluru: With heightened concern over the impact of excessive use of technology — especially social media addiction — on mental health in our cities, the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) is planning to come up with an Urban Mental Health Plan. Revealing this at the 20th convocation of NIMHANS here on Saturday, institute Director B.N. Gangadhar said the current district mental health plan largely catered to issues...

-The New Indian Express KASARGOD: A good number of the tribespeople in the district still depend on springs, streams, ponds and rivulets for drinking water. But a ‘live-in’ study of their lives reveals they are the relatively luckier ones. For those who depend on wells, borewells, and public taps often struggle for water, especially during the harsh months. Volunteers of Kudumbashree Mission, as part of a poverty alleviation initiative, visited and lived...

-The Hindu Bhaurao Karhade, who considers Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali his cinematic Bible, sold five acres of farmland to make a rustic and gutsy Marathi film, Khwada. One of the important turn-of-the-century developments has been the democratisation of cinema. The steady spread of cine literacy, the strong influence of moving images combined with an easier access to technology and emerging online exhibition platforms has meant that potentially anyone who dreams of making...

-The Hindu The production of waste in India is growing at an exponential rate. However, the welfare and dignity of the informal workers involved in the stigmatised sector of waste management remains at the bottom of any government’s political agenda. Human society has always produced waste and always will. Waste materials — substances without value — are constantly generated in all production, all distribution and all consumption processes. The time waste spends...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: Fifteen years since farmers in the state's Marathwada and Vidarbha regions started taking their own lives, the state on Friday announced the first psycho-social health plan to check the epidemic of suicides. The plan hinges on community health workers — the accredited social health activists (ASHAs) and anganwadi workers — carrying out a questionnaire-based screening test to assess the mental health of farmers. "We carried out an audit...