Sand slips

More than food

Sattu — roasted gram flour — is not just food in Bihar. It is an entire way of life. Interestingly, its place in popular culture notwithstanding, sattu is not used in any religious ceremony. Although the origins of this debarment are unclear, it is believed that this could be due to the fact that members of ‘lower’ castes used to be the ones doing the actual roasting.

Vaccine woes continue

For long, India’s vaccination programme had six vaccines for tuberculosis, diphtheria, pertussis, whooping cough, tetanus, polio and measles. The vaccines were cheap and protected children adequately. But in the last decade, the country has been under tremendous pressure from the pharmaceutical industry to include a variety of expensive vaccines in its immunisation programme.

Time for course correction

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee will be rewriting the budget from today. This became clear late in the afternoon yesterday when state elections results were declared and the Congress party was routed in three of the five states that went to polls.

Bhagalpur may commission a waste-to-energy plant

The small municipality of Bhagalpur in Bihar is considering setting up a waste-to-energy plant in the city. On February 19, the city municipal corporation selected one of the proposals submitted to it to manage the city's waste. The proposals were submitted in response to a request sent out by the municipality in December last year.

Food authority backtracks

Six states and a union territory feed their people milk that does not meet the standards set by India’s food regulatory body at all. Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram and Daman & Diu are the “100 per cent non-conforming” states. In Delhi, 70 per cent of the samples failed the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) test. Yet, the authority claims there is no danger in drinking the milk.

That sinking feeling

Raging Kosi waters surrounded Ramnarayan Rai for 12 days in Madhepura's Batona village. Holed up in his house, he watched his younger brother, a youth of 28, waste and die of hunger. Two days after the death, his courage gave way when the body started decaying. He lit a matchstick and placed it on the lips of his dead brother--symbolic of Hindu funeral--and threw the body in the river Kosi--Sorrow of Bihar.

Non-profit diseases

 

Vaccine Eloquent

gavi, which consists of governments of developed and developing countries, un agencies, multilateral bodies and the pharmaceuticals industry (see box Alliance board), plays an important role in restructuring national programmes.

Super Market

• India has 16,000 recorded plant species. About 3,000 of these yield minor forest produce (MFP). • Nearly 500 million people living in and around forests in India depend on MFP for sustenance and as a supplement to their income