Newspaper and television reports leave us thinking that India is poised to become a superpower, but a more wholesome measure of where the country is will paint a different picture. The problems are still immense, and India lags far behind the world in many ways; it is important to note this and begin tackling them, says Abhijit Das.

Despite crores of rupees having been spent in name of tribal and other development programmes in one block of Palakkad district in Kerala, the region suffers from poor access to decent health care. 80 per cent of the adivasi population here are living in abject poverty. M Suchitra reports.

The central government wants to ban the sale of non-iodised salt on grounds of rising iodine deficiency. However, states with notable rise in deficiency are those where a ban has already been in force for the past two decades – the north-eastern states and Uttar Pradesh. P Venu, an Assistant Salt Commissioner in Gujarat, connects the dots.

Once again, a study by the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment found alarming levels of pesticide residues in soft drinks and stirred up a public debate. However, the larger issue of how pesticides have invaded the ground water and gotten into the food chain must not be missed, notes Ramesh Menon.

In July, 18 Nobel laureates met with over 500 young scientists from around the world in Germany. India sent 22 researchers. The meeting threw up many questions pertaining to the practice of scientific research in India. Varupi Jain has more.

Within in the next two years, around 10 lakh people will die because of smoking in India alone, says one of the most comprehensive studies on the habit in the country. India is on the threshold of a tobacco-unleashed epidemic, says Ramesh Menon.

India has ratified the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, but done very little to protect the rights of the disabled in accordance with it. Freny Manecksha reports.

The Badaun district administration in UP is on a war-footing to convert all dry toilets and rehabilitate manual scavengers before the end of the year. Over the last few months 1600 scavengers have been rehabilitated. Sumita Thapar reports.

The failure in India is the major reason why the UN cannot meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving the 2.6 billion in the world without sanitation by 2015. South Asian countries resolve to try harder. Darryl D'Monte reports.

It is frightening to think of how the new drug resistant strain of tuberculosis is going to spread in crowded, unhygienic, urban India. Doctors are worried. Ramesh Menon reports.

Gita Aravamudan’s book Baby Makers is a bare-it-all picture of surrogacy in India, and exposes the multiple facets of the practice through the lens of a keen investigative journalist. Padmalatha Ravi shares more details about the volume.

Tales of medical malpractice and its impact on patients are all too common in India. But what does the culture of corruption mean for one who wishes to remain true to the noble profession that he had chosen for himself? Pavan Kulkarni finds out.

The Government of Karnataka's Working Group on Decentralization discusses institutions for upward accountability in Panchayati Raj. The second in a series of articles adapted from the Working Group's 2002 report.

An update from Bangalore's PROOF (Public Records of Operations and Finance) campaign.

Karnataka's West Coast Paper Mill had to deal with much more than shareholders on the day of its recent Annual General Meeting.

Anitha Pailoor profiles a large landholding family farm in Karnataka's Hassan district that switched from chemical farming to organic in the mid-nineties.

Citizens and government are thinking differently about each other on access to information, notes Subramaniam Vincent. The Central law in the next challenge.

Subramaniam Vincent follows the intrigue, as New Delhi seeks to weaken Right to Information laws on the one hand, and receives a proposal to strengthen RTI at the same time.

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India is the nation's supreme audit institution. It is widely respected for its unshaken independence in auditing government expenditure. But in its scrutiny of Karnataka's Gerusoppa dam, it let off the Karnataka Power Corporation on two key counts. Himanshu Upadhyaya interprets the CAG's 2004 report.

The Karnataka Governor, T N Chaturvedi, recently asked the state government for an explanation on why the state wants the central government to clear the Dandeli dam on the river Kali. This, in light of the fact that state government departments had themselves recommended and shelved the project earlier. An India Together report.

Efforts to make learning more interactive and more fun for students appear promising, but it may be too soon to judge if they are positively impacting children's performance in standard tests and surveys. Meanwhile, teachers complain that these efforts have added to their already heavy burden. Padmalatha Ravi reports.

When a teacher specially trained to handle children with special needs started work at a local government school in Bangalore, children were benefited and stopped dropping out. Padmalatha Ravi has more.

A private high school in Sirsi, in northern Karnataka is not stopping at imparting academic education. It has also started teaching practical water literacy to the people of five Malnad districts. The rain centre at the school, with 28 examples of rain water harvesting, opened in early June. Shree Padre reports.

The government school system is not a rationally driven and coherent apparatus of state policy. Instead, its everyday work is continuously and varyingly reshaped in the light of social, institutional, and policy related inflections, write A R Vasavi and Rahul Mukhopadhyay.

"Trying to measure the success of water harvesting only with increased water level is not fair. The vegetation improves, so does the soil moisture.” Shree Padre reports on an arecanut farming family's success.

Shrikrishna D

Graduates are difficult to influence with money and liquor, says one BJP campaigner flatly about the race for Bengaluru’s MLC seat. The Lok Satta candidate meanwhile is targeting precisely the reform seekers amongst the elite. Navya P K reports.

A retired physician in small-town Manipal in Karnataka sets an example in kitchen gardening and highlights the many benefits it brings apart from the yield itself. Shree Padre brings us his remarkable story.

Various independent studies and research reveal close to 20 per cent of students across India suffering from some degree of visual impairment. A new initiative from the Nayonika Eye Care Charitable Trust seeks to correct this through the combined efforts of a wider network.

The government claims to provide equal opportunities for women, but the traditional power structure and corruption usually ensure the opposite. Aparna Pallavi reports from Ramtek, Maharashtra.

Confronting the history or failed justice for women in rural courts, a legal resource organisation sets up a training and fellowship program for women lawyers in small-town Maharashtra.

Rasika Dhavse reports on a Pune-based organisation that conducts drama therapy sessions designed to help special populations grow to their potential.

Akanksha began as an idea to give slum children time and space to simply be kids, to laugh and play. It has evolved into a unique learning environment that not only provides opportunities for them to gain employment but also in the process teaches tolerance and a broader view of the world. Jemma Purdey reports.

"This building is dangerous. It may collapse at any time. Enter at your own risk." So goes a warning sign at the entrance to a building in Mumbai. Buildings that crumble are an old tradition in this city, with at least one cause being the Rent Control Act. Dilip D'Souza says the pernicious law must go.

Suicides by consuming poison contribute to over two-thirds of the total autopsies performed at a sub-district hospital in interior Vidarbha, Maharashtra. "Pesticide could be bought from any Krishi Kendra. But for medicine, they've to walk miles before they could get it," says one health official. Jaideep Hardikar reports.

At least sixteen committees and panels – from the National Farmers Commission led by Professor M S Swaminathan to the Planning Commission's fact-finding-mission led by bureaucrat Adarsh Misra – came this year to Vidarbha, apparently peeved by and concerned over the suicide crisis. Nothing has come of all this yet, notes Jaideep Hardikar.

Biogas plants are not new, but their size, relative unwieldyness and reliance on large quantities of cattle dung have held back their potential attractiveness for the domestic cooking sector. That may change soon, thanks to the ingenuity of Dr Anand Karve. Vinita Deshmukh reports about Karve's new award-winning compact plant.

"We are confused, whom should we believe in? The finance minister says action will be taken within 48 hours against officials who do not release the credit, and the babus say they have no notification," says sixty-year-old Tatyaji Panghate at Ghonsa in Zari Jamni block of Yavatmal. Jaideep Hardikar reports on more suicides in Vidarbha.

Incessant rainfall in the catchment area of the Sardar Sarovar dam, coupled with less water being allowed to flow into the Narmada main canal led to an unusual overflow in early August, despite upstream dams not recording downstream releases. Himanshu Upadhyaya reports on the devastation in the Narmada valley.

Maharashtra's sugar cooperatives helped raise hundreds of thousands of farmers out of high-risk choices, and brought a measure of economic security to the sugar belt. But over the years, big farmers have hijacked the original premise of the cooperative movement, and the region's prosperous past is now fading. Gagandeep Kaur reports.

The Comptroller and Auditor General's audit of relief packages for Vidarbha's farmers finds that they were tardy in implementation, mindless in conceptualisation and "inconsistent with local needs." The state government has skirted debate. Jaideep Hardikar on the indictment.

There are more fronts in the fray across the State this time. And with multi-cornered contests in almost all seats, there could be some major upsets, writes P Sainath.

Will the Congress-NCP gain from a multiplicity of fronts which could dissipate the anti-Congress vote? Or will the Shiv Sena-BJP benefit from the Third Front's cutting into the Congress-NCP vote?

The Delhi High Court rules that a proposed thermal power plant cannot come up unless its likely impact on the growth on alphonso mangoes is studied first. Kanchi Kohli reports.

Jackfruit from the farm of Maharashtra's Prakash Sawanth yielded fruit in a record two years, an unheard of agricultural phenomenon in the country. Shrikrishna D reports on the many specialities of the new variety.

India's commercial capital suffers from a deplorable lack of open spaces and falls far below both national and global standards in that respect. Clearly, the BMC is not tuned in to the requirements, as Darryl D'Monte shows in his report on the draft development plan for the city.

The report of the Kelkar Committee on balanced development in Maharashtra has important recommendations. But will it all come to nought because of its failure to avoid some conventional pitfalls? Shripad Dharmadhikary explores.

Although most members of the Mahila Shanti Sena are illiterate labourers, they are very aware of the strength of thier force, and the importance of their role in society. Alka Arya reports on a women's movement that is tackling complex social and economic questions with a deep conviction for peace.

Since 1963, there have been repeated breaches in the Kosi's embankments, causing tremendous loss and tragedy. Yet, Bihar's governments have made little headway and argue each year as if the problems were new, says Dinesh Kumar Mishra.

A recent study on the Kosi deluge asserts that embankments are the root cause of the present crises. Only a longterm micro-level study of why the river course is changing along with firm policy decisions can remedy the situation, says Sudhirendar Sharma.