India has been ranked the fourth most dangerous country in the world for women, but the widespread practice of selectively aborting female foetuses may make it the most hostile to the female gender. In the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, where the child sex ratio (0 - 6 years of age) has dropped to 886 girls per 1,000 boys - according to provisional data in the 2011 census - a strong civil...

Amid policy battles over food production, energy resources and economic decline, one untapped natural resource that is guaranteed to boost production on a global scale has been stubbornly overlooked – the power of women in the labour force. According to the World Bank's 2012 World Development Report (WDR) "Gender Equality and Development", ensuring equal access for women farmers would increase maize yields by 11 to 16 percent in Malawi and 17...

-IANS   Assam has been allocated $2.5 million by a UN body to help improve hygiene in rural areas, stressing on the economic gains that would follow "when people spend less money on preventable sanitation-related diseases". India is among 10 countries - seven African and three Asian - which have been identified for a five-year project. India loses $53.4 billion annually due to poor sanitation and hygiene, according to a recent report...

The brutality and the intensity of the attack mounted on a gathering of worshippers at the Jama Masjid in Gopalgarh by the members of a community on the fateful Wednesday past week was such that the residents of some 40 odd Meo villages dotting Kaman tehsil in Bharatpur are yet to recover from their horror. The Meos, who inhabit the hilly Mewat terrain in Rajasthan and Haryana, are themselves known to...

The draft of National Food Security Bill has been uploaded on the internet. Congress President Sonia Gandhi's illness had derailed the grand launch of her dream project during the Parliament's monsoon session. The draft appears on the website of the Department of Food and Public Distribution, inviting the public for its comments and suggestions by September end. Gandhi is believed to have pulled up Food Minister KV Thomas for not tabling...