-Economic and Political Weekly The importance of hand-washing in personal and public hygiene has evolved over the centuries. While the market with its countless number of soaps and hand-wash products for personal hygiene with the accompanying advertising has created a false sense of security, it is community hygiene implemented through public health measures that is really effective in the battle against disease. Lekha D Bhat (lekhabhatd@gmail.com) teaches at the Department of Social...

-The New Indian Express KASARGOD: A good number of the tribespeople in the district still depend on springs, streams, ponds and rivulets for drinking water. But a ‘live-in’ study of their lives reveals they are the relatively luckier ones. For those who depend on wells, borewells, and public taps often struggle for water, especially during the harsh months. Volunteers of Kudumbashree Mission, as part of a poverty alleviation initiative, visited and lived...

-The Indian Express There is a worrying dearth of Indian economists working on agriculture today. In his classic Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went, John Kenneth Galbraith observed how the economics profession had a well-defined order of precedence. At the top were the economic theorists and specialists in banking and finance. At the bottom of the hierarchy were agricultural economists. George F. Warren from Cornell University was even worse — a...

-The New Indian Express MYSURU: His origins speak of hardship and hard work. Farmer Puttaiah, son of a bonded labourer, who has been invited by the state government to inaugurate Dasara festivities, is, however in the limelight today as he has been a symbol of self-sufficiency and hope for fellow farmers. Of his childhood, Puttaiah says, “My father Karaiah, a bonded labourer, worked for Rs 100 per annum with landlords in K...

-The Hindu The production of waste in India is growing at an exponential rate. However, the welfare and dignity of the informal workers involved in the stigmatised sector of waste management remains at the bottom of any government’s political agenda. Human society has always produced waste and always will. Waste materials — substances without value — are constantly generated in all production, all distribution and all consumption processes. The time waste spends...