-The Times of India   MUZAFFARPUR: Union health minister Harsh Vardhan on Sunday claimed at Kanti primary health centre (PHC) near here that 92% of the children affected by acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) had not been administered vaccination for Japanese Encephalitis (JE). Launching a two-day JE vaccination drive in Muzaffarpur district from Kanti, the minister said it is a subject of research whether the AES is a form of JE or not. The...

-The Indian Express   The food security act is inadequate to meeting the malnutrition challenge. Malnutrition remains one of the biggest challenges facing India. In the last large survey, the National Family Health Survey of 2005-06, about 42 per cent children under the age of five were underweight. Economic growth has failed to redress this problem. Recently released estimates from the District Level Health Survey for selected states continue to paint a dismal...

-The Business Standard   How a law to conserve groundwater led to a better paid and better organised migrant workforce Ludhiana: For some years now, Punjab's fields have lain fallow through the searing dry heat of May; but come June's steamy humidity, small bands of lithe, slender men from Bihar fan out across the waterlogged paddy fields, transplanting rice saplings with fluid efficiency. Bihar's paddy planters have frequented Punjab since the 1960s when rice...

-The Times of India   Honey, they've shrunk the city. Recently released census data shows that between 2001 and 2011, population in Mumbai, Kolkata and two inner districts of Delhi declined, while in Hyderabad and Chennai only a small increase took place. But surrounding regions of these cities showed phenomenal growth indicating a shifting center of gravity in metropolises. Declining populations in some of the metropolises is notable though unsurprising. These cities are...

-The Telegraph   Supaul: A college graduate hailing from a farmers' family, Anil Kumar Yadav (32) roamed around in Delhi and Mumbai in search of a job only to return empty-handed, about three years ago. The very idea of getting engaged in the family's traditional vocation was "nightmarish" to him. Anil, a resident of Samda Chowk village under Basantpur block of Supaul district, around 350km northeast of Patna, today owns a spanking motorcycle,...