-Down to Earth   All safe motherhood programmes of the government are focused on institutional deliveries, but health centres are in disarray. Experts suggest ways to reduce deaths during delivery Lal Mohan, a daily wage labourer, has no clue what took his wife's life. Sarita Devi, 25, was expecting her third child, and was on way to a good hospital at Bhagalpur district in Bihar. "She was normal all through the nine months...

-The New York Times   As politicians scramble for India's 815 million votes in the most expensive and closely contested general election in the nation's history, an unexpected protest is rumbling from what was once one of the country's most placid voter blocs: its farmers. The protest is inflamed by rising attention to the shocking suicide rate on India's hardscrabble farms. Since 1995, more than 290,000 farmers have killed themselves. Though that figure,...

-Tehelka   It is time India had a Good Samaritan law  It has been more than a year since the Nirbhaya rape case stirred the nation. Apart from the brutality inflicted upon the victim what else became a stigma for our society was the fact that no one came to the victim's rescue when the two were lying on the street naked and grievously injured. Of course people did cross them in luxurious...

-The New Indian Express   PARALAKHEMUNDI: Miliara, a nondescript tribal dominated village in Gumma block of Gajapati, wears a deserted look. Home to 62 families, many of them have shifted to other parts of the State to escape the cruel summer. And those who have stayed back are having to struggle with water crisis, the biggest problem in the village. Villagers here earn their livelihood from tamarind and cashewnut plantation. But no the yield...

-The Hindu   Adilabad (Andhra Pradesh): The taste of tamarind is likely to turn more tartaric this season given its higher market price at Rs. 70 to Rs. 80 a kg despite the bumper crop. "The crop is good but the cumulative yield is not commensurate as many of the huge old trees have been felled mercilessly in rural area," Killare Namdev, a tamarind trader from Yavatmal in Maharashtra, gives out the reason...