-The Economic Times NEW DELHI/ KOCHI: A growing number of farmers are turning entrepreneurs and earning big bucks from something they offered free to friends and relatives - a healthy and relaxing weekend to unwind in lush green farms, drive a tractor, ride a bullock cart, milk a cow and pluck fresh fruit from orchards. Farm tourism, once a small niche, is expanding rapidly and getting a big push from the tourism...

-Outlook Patna: Poor households in Bihar will be provided poultry and goats free-of-cost so that they get their supplement of nutrition in the form of eggs and milk, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said today. "Every poor family will get three goats each through self -help groups (SHGs) as part of a development plan," Kumar said at a function here. "Besides, 5.50 lakh households each will get 45 hens in three instalments through SHGs,"...

-Open the Magazine   Villagers saw him cleaning his undergarments stained with goat blood and thought he had a sexual disease. But Arunachalam Muruganantham was only trying to make a smart, cheap sanitary pad for his wife I am perhaps the only man to have ever worn a sanitary napkin. I am the only man who understands what a woman endures during those days. The wetness. The discomfort. The constant fear of stains....

-The Economist An absence of optimism plays a large role in keeping people trapped in poverty THE idea that an infusion of hope can make a big difference to the lives of wretchedly poor people sounds like something dreamed up by a well-meaning activist or a tub-thumping politician. Yet this was the central thrust of a lecture at Harvard University on May 3rd by Esther Duflo, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute...

Is the majority of India veg or non-veg? Well, contrary to impression, the land of Gandhi and Buddha is predominantly non-veg. It may well have been majority vegetarian country at some point of time but the new trend is that more and more people are taking to non-vegetarian diets. A new policy paper, “Veg or Non-Veg? India at the Crossroads,” published by Brighter Green, a New York-based public policy action...