Organic Universe

It is a universe of its own—an expanding universe that has its own producers and consumers, its entrepreneurs, its markets, its passionate aficionados of scientists and evangelists. It is a universe that is governed by a different set of regulations and plays strictly by the rules, for the most part.

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.

Unhealthy countryside

Skinny and visibly weak, 39- year-old Rajkumar Haribhajan Patil had been suffering from contractions in the chest, and feeling panicky and restless for the past five years. In January 2010, he suffered severe palpitations and was rushed to a private clinic in Warud, in Maharashtra’s Nagpur district. Doctors diagnosed him with hypertension.

Mercury rises early

  Khurda is the worst affected in Orissa, with 10 sunstroke deaths reported PHOTOGRAPHS AGNIMIRH BASU

Tipaimukh Dam in Manipur driving a wedge?

The proposed 164-m-high dam will come up 500 m downstream of the confluence of the Barak and Tuivai rivers. Its reservoir will have a storage capacity of 15,900 million cubic m with a maximum depth of 1,725.5 m.

Mautak will flower

The abundance of seeds in moist areas then invites rats and rodents, whose fertility, as nature would have it, increases when they feed on bamboo seeds. A study by Fabian M Jaksic and Mauricio Lima, ecologists at the Center for Advanced Studies in Ecology and Biodiversity in Chile, records a clear relation between rodent outbreaks in South America since in the 16th century and bamboo flowering and high rainfall.

Logjam

Unquiet woods With the ban and without access to forest revenue, Northeast economy is in doldrums

Drilling by ONGC stopped in Mizoram

THE Mizoram State Pollution Control Board has asked the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) to suspend exploratory drilling for flouting environmental norms.

The link between blood pressure and suicides

An urban doctor whom I contacted for the story on hypertension in rural India told me that I would never be able to link stress to the increased incidence of the disease.

Rising trend

One of the biggest killers of modern times, hypertension has silently rooted itself in rural India, where 71 per cent of the country’s population resides.