-The Hindu As the operations of organised gangs that seek to make a killing out of the insatiable demand for sand are in focus, environmental concerns posed by indiscriminate mining grow. Nitin Sethi discusses the imperatives. Should India have a river regulatory zone, on the lines of the coastal regulatory zone, to manage development and mining activity? The devastation in Uttarakhand, and the controversy over the sand mafia's control on river beds,...
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Centre for extending MDM to backward dists -Akshaya Mukul
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Government's failure to run the Mid-Day Meal (MDM) scheme smoothly in the government schools has not stopped it from proposing to extend the programme to cover 25% children of private schools in SC, ST and minority-concentrated districts. Initially, the idea was criticized within the HRD ministry and now both the finance ministry and the Planning Commission have put a spanner in the proposal. Sources in the...
More »Unequal status tells on women’s nutrition -Rukmini S
-The Hindu Younger daughters-in-law in rural families have shorter children on average, says research There is new evidence that the unequal social status of women could play a significant - and as yet ignored - role in explaining India's "inexplicably" high under-nutrition levels. For its per capita income, India has stubbornly higher than expected levels of stunting and under-weight among children and adults - the so-called "Asian enigma" which, with countries like...
More »India lost 220 languages in last 50 years, survey finds -Sandhya Soman
-The Times of India MUMBAI: India has lost around 20% of its languages in the past five decades, a survey by the Vadodara-based Bhasha Research and Publication Centre has revealed. The country had 1,100 languages in 1961, but nearly 220 of them have disappeared, said Ganesh Devy, writer and lead co-ordinator of the survey called the People's Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI). The survey was carried out over two years from 2011. "We...
More »‘Caste no bar’, in words if not in action-Rukmini S
-The Hindu While many young Indians are showing an interest in marrying across caste, indications are that not many actually go ahead and cross caste boundaries. Recent Research by Amit Ahuja, assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California - Santa Barbara, and Susan L. Ostermann, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California - Berkeley, showed that more than half...
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