News stories by K. S. Harikrishnan, page 2

KUDANKULAM, India, Jan 06 (IPS) - Mahalakshmi, a housewife married to a farmer, is afraid for her family's future. The fifty-two-year-old woman is also frustrated that Indian authorities have "betrayed" poor villagers.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India, Oct 08 (IPS) - For the first time in over four decades, the number of people migrating out of the southern Indian state of Kerala, home to 33.3 million people, is on the decline.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India, Aug 14 (IPS) - Four-year-old Deepak Yadav, a mentally disabled boy from Indore city in the Indian state Madhya Pradesh, was being treated for stomach problems at Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalaya, a government hospital for children attached to the M. G. M. Medical College.

'We tell friends planning to visit us to follow the stench of rotting garbage,' says Jeevaratnam (one name), a homemaker in this village 16 km from Kerala state’s capital of Thiruvananthapuram.

Security concerns appear to have stymied the growth of community radio (CR) in India, a vast and diverse country of 1.2 billion people, the bulk of them living in remote, rural areas.

Five years ago, Pulparambil Varghese began cultivating ginger on 1.37 acres of land he owned in Thrikkeppatta village near Kalpetta town in Wayanad district of the southern Indian state of Kerala. Over the years, he borrowed 300,000 rupees (5,700 dollars) from banks and private financial institutions.

While Indian psychiatrists have rejected a World Health Organisation (WHO) study portraying India as the depression capital of the world, they say it has indirectly drawn attention to an acute shortage of trained personnel and facilities to deal with mental illness.

When Sujatha’s husband learned that she had conceived just five months after they got married, he became agitated over what he called her 'ill-timed pregnancy'. To worsen her husband’s anxiety, a test to determine the sex of the foetus showed she was carrying a girl.

For Janu, walking the streets to beg for alms is the only option for survival. After all, she has a two-year-old daughter to feed, and she herself, at 14 years old, is little more than a child.

Ajith, a nine-year old boy from Badiyadukka village in the southern Indian state of Kerala, waits patiently for his mother to return from the market and take him to the toilet. His bones are so deformed, he is totally immobile.