-The Financial Express The prime minister, in his Independence Day speech, flagged “population explosion” as a problem and talked of the need to counter it. It is surprising that the government has missed the message on the declining trend in fertility in the country and is gearing up to fight yesterday’s problem. The proponents of population regulation raise the bogey of the absolute population level already being too high and the...

  In the month of June this year, encephalitis related deaths in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district grabbed the headlines. Actually, most of the children, who were admitted or died at Shri Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH), hailed from East Champaran, Vaishali, Sitamarhi and Samastipur apart from Muzaffarpur. Unfortunately, till recently official data on the number of cases and deaths related to Japanese Encephalitis (JE) and Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) was unavailable for...

-Down to Earth Over 60 years after the country got its first plan to rejuvenate the rivers, not a single basin has been spared from overexploitation All the 20 river basins of the country share the story of the Cauvery: how human interference has changed every river’s form and flow pattern over the past few decades. Water in the country’s three major rivers — the Indus, the Brahmaputra and the Ganga — has...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: About 100 district court complexes in the country out of 665 have no toilets for women. And those which have washrooms, only 40% are fully functional, according to a latest survey of all the district courts across the country. Half of the district courts in the country had no designated waiting areas while only 39% were full service court complexes with post office, bank branch,...

-The Hindu They can be an effective tool for rainwater harvesting With an increased variability of monsoons and rapidly depleting groundwater tables, large parts of India are reeling under water stress. A number of peninsular regions like Bundelkhand, Vidarbha and Marathwada have been facing recurring drought-like situations. Given the enormity of the crisis, at a recent NITI Aayog meeting, Prime Minister Narendra Modi explicated the need to implement innovative water management measures,...