India's hurried quest for development and its disregard for road safety have resulted in a major public health problem that demands serious thought and action. The high mortality and morbidity associated with road traffic injuries are a major public health challenge worldwide. Every year, road traffic crashes kill an estimated 1.2 million people. The figure for the injured is over 50 million. Significant increases in these estimates are projected over the...

A strong protagonist who overcomes all odds, a village scoundrel who takes advantage of the ignorance and naivete of the people around him, family drama Usha Rajeswari's new directorial venture has all this and more. But Shakti Pirakkudhu' (A New Strength Is Born) is not your regular Tamil feature film. The protagonist is a middle-aged woman with two kids, and the odds she surmounts are the difficulties faced by women...

Eighty-five-year old Zahur Shah from the 250-year-old Badarpur Khadar village said he was searching for the cancer camp some time back when a passer-by told him he was standing in front of it. “Agar mujhe padna aata toh mere itne ghante usko dhoondne mein nahi lagte. Padai likhai ke bina insaan janwar jaisa hai,” says the father of nine children, and this family of three generations has never been to school. This...

India has long been simultaneously a country of enormous wealth and desperate poverty. In recent decades, the distance has only grown between those who enjoy living standards comparable to the finest in the world, and the millions left far behind. Even as Indians crowd the lists of the world’s richest dollar billionaires, an estimated 200 million people sleep hungry. Half our children are malnourished and nearly a fifth severely so....

As millions of children around the world start school this month, many are discovering something critical is missing. It's not teachers or textbooks - it's toilets. Poor sanitation doesn't just cause high rates of illness and absenteeism, but it also affects a child's intelligence, aid agencies say, with research showing that diarrhoea and worm infestations can lower IQ. Sanitation is one of the most wildly off-track targets under the United Nations' anti-poverty...