-Down to Earth Long-term exposure to organophosphate insecticides puts the farming community at a higher risk of developing diabetes, shows a study IN 2011, a 15-year-old girl from Madurai was admitted to hospital for diabetes ketoacidosis. It is a life-threatening condition that develops when cells in the body are unable to get the sugar (glucose) they need due to the lack of insulin. Krishnan Swaminathan, an endocrinologist and president of the...

-Scroll.in Possibly to woo voters, the state government started the Hausla Poshan Yojana last year that lasted only two months. On a cold January morning in Ayadhnagar village in Uttar Pradesh’s Hapur district, a group of 10 children huddled around a bonfire outside their anganwadi centre. Despite the warmth of the fire, they shivered. The bare and dusty centre did not have mats for them to sit on and some of...

-The Hindu Under a searing sun, the Agariyas continue to make salt in the Little Rann of Kutch just as their ancestors have done down the ages A pair of black gum boots stands in the corner of Dhirubhai’s temporary shack, his home for eight months in the Little Rann of Kutch. The shack, built entirely of jute bags and plastic sheets and propped up by bamboo poles, houses nine members of...

-The Indian Express Demonetisation shows India’s social welfare measures like MGNREGS to be worryingly patchy Following the announcement of demonetisation, reports of its devastating impact on informal sector workers, farmers and migrants began to pour in from across the country. Seeking evidence on two questions — do social security measures work in the face of such an economic shock, and do these programmes themselves face disruption because of demonetisation — we conducted...

-Scroll.in / IndiaSpend.com Falling global demand, environmental regulations and contemporary cow politics have choked the leather economy of Uttar Pradesh's largest industrial city. Shadab Hussain, 23, dropped out of school at age 11 to work in a leather factory in Kanpur, the oldest and largest industrial city of India’s most populous state. To support his family, parents and four siblings, he worked eight-hour shifts every day for a monthly salary of Rs...