World Day Against Child Labour: 11 child labour laws in India you should definitely know

Even after the employment of children has been banned in the industrial and the commercial sectors, where the working conditions are hazardous, there are people in India who continue to employ small children.

World Day Against Child Labour, June 12, is a holiday passed by International Labour Organisation (ILO), a body of the United Nations. This day was started in 2002 in order to bring attention to child labour problems. The theme for 2015 is 'NO to Child Labour, YES to Quality Education'.

Read the full post from indiatoday.indiatoday.in

Is that food on your plate?

Poison in our kitchen: How deadly chemicals have invaded India's food chain

Wake up and smell the coffee. Err...maybe, not. Who wants to start a new day with the depressing possibility that the first drink you chug down may have coffee-flavoured mud, starch or worse? A good ol' cuppa tea, then? What if it has coal tar dye? You'll end up with lung or skin cancer. Ouch. Pour out some apple juice. And puke your way to nirvana? It may just have fungi patulin. How about a glass of ice-cold milk? Brace for a jolt of deadly chemicals: antibiotic gentamicin, pumped indiscriminately into cows, that will give you hard-to-treat infections; pesticide boric acid that kills cockroaches and gives humans lead poisoning; preservative formalin that can change your kidneys forever. So just drink some water. But, first, pray that there's no bromate lurking in it, to turn on your cancer genes.

Wolf of food street
With the great instant noodle scare in the last few days, a fear psychosis has gripped the nation. Every food on your plate is suspect: all the items above have been recorded, reported or recalled by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) ever since it came into being in 2011. Harmful, dangerous, alien chemicals and non-foods are secretly invading our lives, as a culture of infectious greed grips much of our food chain: from farm to fork. At any given point, someone somewhere along multiple touch points on that chain is trying to get rich by altering, substituting, passing off or turning a blind eye to unacceptable processes and materials. A terrible human and economic cost looms large.

India is the world's worst food violator, reports global food source monitoring company, Food Sentry. China follows closely and the US is also one of the top 10. Most violated foods are raw or minimally processed, including seafood, vegetables, fruits, spices, dairy products, meats and grains. More than a third of food frauds take place due to "excessive or illegal pesticides", pathogen contamination and filth or insanitary conditions. "What's worrying is the mislabelling on products of packaged foods," says Dr Suneeta Chandorkar, Assistant Professor, Department of Food and Nutrition, Faculty of Family and Community Services, MS University, Vadodara. "They all say 'healthy' but tests have shown they are hardly that."

Read the post from indiatoday.indiatoday.in

Going all out for neutrino research

India lost its lead in neutrino studies when research tapered off in the 1990s. The India-based Neutrino Observatory can now help it reclaim this advantage and its global leadership in understanding this mysterious particle

Just a few years ago, we witnessed how a national project, the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO), which is to study fundamental particles called neutrinos, was subject to a barrage of questions from environmentalists,politicians and others ever since it was cleared. The project, which involves the construction of an underground laboratory, was initially to be located in the Nilgiris but later, on grounds that it was too close to tiger habitat, was moved to a cavern under a rocky mountain in the Bodi West Hills region of Theni district, about 110 kilometres west of Madurai in Tamil Nadu.

The already much-delayed and important physics project needs to be explained

Read the centre page article written by A. P. J. Abdul Kalam & Srijan Pal Singh in The Hindu dt. 17th Jun 2015

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India's does better in 'Open data barometer'

India has been ranked 34th among 77 countries in yet another open government data assessment report, as open government initiatives came under the lens at an annual summit in London last week.

As open government initiatives and models were focussed upon at an annual summit in London under the auspices of the Open Government Partnership last week, India did comparatively better in yet another international report on open government data released on the occasion.

In this report, 'Open Data Barometer', which evaluated countries on the basis of "the context, availability and emerging impacts of Open Government Data (OGD)", India was ranked 34th among 77 countries. The report was prepared by the World Wide Web Foundation and Open Data Institute and released at the summit by no less a person than Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web.

Read the news report from The Hindu

The meat of the matter

Regional differences and meat-eating in India

We’ve put out some interesting stuff on India’s consumption habits over the last few days based on new National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data. First, we did a story on the turnaround in India’s Public Distribution System. Then we looked at how class determines what we eat and drink. And finally, we did a really cool visualisation of what consumption looks like if you are rich or poor.

There are two parts of food habits that we find people always have a lot of interest in: regional differences, and meat-eating. We’ve decided to put the two together here to give you an idea how meat preferences change by state. All the visualisation for this post has been done by Vivekanandan M.

The NSSO uses a recall period of seven days for meat as against 30 days for milk and 365 days for items like wheat and rice. What this means is that the respondent is asked whether he or she consumed a particular meat in the last even days, what quantity of it, and at what price. So it’s conceivable that meat consumption is underestimated by the NSSO. I haven’t eaten meat in the last week, for example, but I probably will this weekend.

The Hindu-CNN IBN State of The Nation survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in 2006 had found that 60% of Indians are non-vegetarians, and it is only among upper castes – Brahmins in particular – that vegetarianism dominates.

That disclaimer out of the way, the proportion of Indians who’d eaten meat in the week preceding the survey was quite low; just 26.5% of households in rural India and 21% in urban India reported consuming fish in the preceding week, and fish is India’s favourite meat (I use the term meat loosely to mean all “animal protein”). Chicken comes a close second, and mutton and beef a distant third and fourth.

So how do things pan out across the country? The data here is for monthly per capita consumption - the amount consumed by a person in a month.

Read the news report from The hindu

India’s biggest drinkers

And they’re not from Kerala

As Kerala takes the first steps towards prohibition, here’s a question: is Kerala really India’s biggest drinker? The media sure seems to think so; here’s the Times of India, saying so today (but giving no source), The Indian Expresssaid it in 2008 but the source study is nowhere on the internet and the Economist said so in 2013citing a Kerala-based advocacy group director. Various other reports cite Kerala’s 2008 Economic Review but this isn’t available online either.

For us, the go-to place for consumption data still is India’s National Sample Survey Office. The NSSO has some well-documented drawbacks, and most likely underestimates consumption at the higher end of the income spectrum. But it’s still the most geographically and economically representative dataset in the country. (All the graphics in this post are by Vivekanandan M.)

The NSSO’s 2011-12 consumption data splits per capita weekly consumption of alcohol into four categories – toddy, country liquor, beer and foreign/ refined liquor or wine. The average rural Indian drinks 220 ml across types of alcohol in a week, or 11.4 litres in a year. Toddy is the most popular drink for rural India followed by country liquor. The average urban Indian, meanwhile, drinks 96 ml per week or 5 litres in a year, country liquor being most popular.

So how do the states compare? The biggest toddy and country liquor-drinking states are Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Arunachal Pradesh and Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Small states and Union Territories are most likely to have sampling errors, so let’s look at the bigger states. Andhra Pradesh tops the bigger states, followed by Assam, Jharkhand and Bihar.

The biggest beer, wine and refined/ foreign liquor drinking states and UTs are Daman & Diu, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Puduchery. Next come Goa, Andhra Pradesh and then Kerala and Karnataka tied in third place.

Read the news report from The Hindu

Where will all the toilets come from?

The focus on World Toilet Day, which falls on November 19, is squarely on a large section of the global population that does not have access to toilets. Particularly women, for whom access to toilets could mean better security.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has turned the spotlight on sanitation like never before, but as World Toilet Day is observed on November 19, India finds itself among 27 countries that have to majorly grapple with the problem of open defecation (based on 2011 data).

The World Health Organization's (WHO) report, 'Progress on sanitation and drinking water - 2013 update', released last year said that more than a quarter of the population in these countries resort to open defecation. It all adds up to one billion people or 15 per cent of the global population doing so, mostly in rural areas.

Read the news report from The Hindu

Arranging a marriage: how India does it

New numbers shed light on what the typical Indian marriage looks like

I wrote last week on inter-caste marriage and how just five per cent of women in the National Council for Applied Economic Research’s (NCAER) pan-India survey said that theirs had been an inter-caste marriage. The numbers got me thinking about arranged marriage which is another facet of marriage in India that we have very little data on.

The same round of the NCAER (2011-12), which I have advance access to, asked women if they knew their husbands before marriage. Around 18 per cent said that they did. The proportion is slightly higher for younger women and for those with more education. It's highest in Himachal Pradesh (56%), the northeastern States (50%) and Kerala (40%).

Read the news report from The Hindu

The challenging road ahead for our smart cities

Ambitious benchmarks are being set for the smart cities the government envisions.

The bar is being set high for the 100 smart cities that the government plans to promote in the country.

If the concept note (which has been described as a work in progress) is to be believed, this is how our smart cities are going to be:

• No commuter would have to spend the best part of his time on travel - not more than 30 minutes in small and medium sized cities and 45 minutes in metropolitan areas, for instance. Unobstructed footpaths should be a norm on either side of the broader roads. Not to speak of cycle tracks.
• And ninety-five percent of residents would not have to walk more than 400 metres to find parks, primary schools and recreational areas and also for shopping. It should be possible to access work places and public and institutional services using public transport or bicycle or by walking.
• The benchmarks cover different sectors including health and education. For example, telemedicine facilities should be available to 100 per cent of residents and the emergency response time should be no more than 30 minutes. The city should have Wi-Fi coverage.

Universities, medical colleges, engineering colleges and technical education centres should be so distributed as to cover a population of 10 lakhs each. And so on.

Read the news report from The Hindu

21 Scenic Train Rides Across India You Need To Go On Right Now

Indian Railways has 63,028 km of tracks running through the country, and operates 14,300 trains on a daily basis. Considering this is the year of the long weekend, you've got ample options to travel to. Needless to say, you know what to do!

1. The Western Ghat Saunter (Karjat - Lonavala)

2. Malnad Magic (Hassan - Mangalore)

3. Arakku Valley Railway (Vizag - Arakku)

4. Flavours of Assam (Guwahati - Lumding - Silchar)

5. Nilgiri Mountain Railway (Mettupalayam - Udhagamandalam)

6. The Goan Experience (Vasco Da Gama - Londa)

7. The Konkan Railway (Ratnagiri - Mangalore)

8. The Kangra Valley Odyssey (Pathankot - Jogindernagar)

9. The Snow Sojourn (Qazigund - Baramulla)

10. The Kashmir Railway (Jammu - Udhampur)

11. The Chilka Route (Bhubaneshwar - Brahmapur)

12. The Desert Queen (Jodhpur - Jaisalmer)

13. The Indian Maharaja Deccan Odyssey (Mumbai - Aurangabad - Agra - Delhi)

14. The Sea Bridge (Mandapam - Pamban - Rameswaram)

15. The Dooars Voyage (Siliguri - Newmal - Hasimara - Alipurduar)

16. The Matheran Hill Railway (Neral - Matheran)

17. The Island Express (Kanyakumari - Trivandrum)

18. The Mandovi Express (Mumbai - Goa)

19. The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (Siliguri - Darjeeling)

20. The Himalayan Queen (Kalka - Shimla)

21. Shindavane and Ambale (Pune-Satara)


Read the full story with details of these trains


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