Our country is poised at a dangerous place right now for many reasons. There are all kinds of battles for supremacy. There are real resistances, there are theatrical and false resistances, revolutions from the top, revolutions from the bottom. And sometimes all of this is interpreted by an increasingly hysterical media which doesn't allow space for reflection, for thought, that will only bombard, control the public imagination.   At times like this,...

Leprosy is generally taken as almost a non-issue in the country now. But, the surprise is that there has been a spurt in leprosy cases this year. No one seems to be worrying aloud about it too much, except a strange old man from Japan who has made it his job to eradicate leprosy and empower leprosy-cured people in this country. Of course, he works on the same issue in...

-The Indian Express   Roughly three decades after Tamil Nadu devised the mid-day meal scheme for schoolchildren, the Jayalalithaa government is working on extending it to breakfast as well. Like neighbouring Puducherry, the state will ensure that schoolchildren are provided a healthy start to the day. Some private and corporation schools have already experimented with the idea. Tamil Nadu’s welfare schemes have been remarkably efficient because of political determination, imaginative policy-making and implementation,...

It will be a mistake to assume that the food security bill, in its present form, will necessarily and sharply reduce India’s embarrassingly high rates of child malnutrition. Satiating hunger and providing nutrients that are essential for healthy growth and fitness are not quite the same thing, a fact highlighted by the leading medical journal Lancet in a recent research paper. The article says the prevalence of anaemia in India...

August is usually the preferred month fo­r family holidays in Eu­­rope, because of ab­­undant sunshine and warm weather. In India, normally, this is the south-west monsoon season and a busy period for farmers. This year, ho­wever, several farm families in coastal Andhra Pradesh, the ri­ce bowl of the country, are repo­rted to have declared ‘crop holiday’. This is because the rice mills have not been lifting even last years’ crop....