For the tribal women of Orissa, plucking leaves off the tendu shrub is a way of life. Laborious and long hours spent on the job barely give the impoverished community enough to survive. Nuapada: There is a local song that poignantly captures the reality of the tendu leaf gatherers of Orissa’s Nuapada district: Chho chhoko, bhunji loka, patar tudle laagsi bhoka (we are Bhunj tribals/while plucking tendu leaves, we feel hunger). I...

Madhya Pradesh is betting cash incentives will curb population growth and improve the ‘life cycle’ of the girl child, but experts question the efficacy of such policies in addressing deep-rooted social prejudices Visitors trudging down the dusty village road are greeted by a giant billboard featuring a smiling Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, hugging two young girls. The tagline in Hindi reads: Gaon ki beti, kisse chhoti...

Finally, gory pictorial warnings like that of rotting mouths, hanging gums and infected lungs, will appear on cigarette, bidi, cigar and smokeless or chewing Tobacco packets from December 1. The Union health ministry issued the notification on Saturday after years of buckling to resistance from the all-powerful Tobacco lobby. The latest notification contains a set of four pictures each of lung and oral cancer. The warnings, which will be rotated every two...

-The Telegraph   Packets of chewing Tobacco sold across India after December 1, 2011 will have to show graphic images portraying the disfiguring effects of oral cancer, but cigarette and bidi packets may show milder pictures, the Union health ministry said today. The health ministry has notified two new sets of pictorial warnings — harsher images for packets of chewing Tobacco — that will replace the existing pictures, scorpions on chewed Tobacco...

-The Indian Express   Packets of Tobacco products will have to carry new harsher pictorial warnings from December 1 as the government today came out with separate sets of gory graphics of cancer-affected lungs and mouth for smoking and smokeless forms of Tobacco. The warnings will be rotated every two years instead of the existing duration of one year, apparently in keeping with a demand from the Tobacco industry. The Union Ministry of...