Inside Chandrababu Naidu’s plan to make Andhra Pradesh a sunrise state

Nara Chandrababu Naidu’s ‘Sunrise Andhra Pradesh-Vision 2029’ aims to make the state India’s most developed, overcoming the legacy issues that came with the creation of Telangana.

In the calendar of the state administration of Andhra Pradesh, the second day of the week is not a Monday. Instead, it is designated Polavaram day—after the ambitious multi-purpose irrigation project that entails interlinking the unruly waters of the Godavari and the Krishna to bridge the water deficit in the latter’s river basin.

Bloody 'Period' Pain: Mensuration Pain Can Be “Almost As Bad As Heart Attack,” Why Aren’t We Researching How To Treat It?

It’s time to talk about period pain. Every month, every woman you know who’s pre-menopause and post-puberty bleeds from their vagina. Periods are one of the most basic facts of life. Any squeamishness around the subject is both ridiculous and harmful, because too many women are suffering in silence, grimacing through the agony they experience with their periods.

How Two Common Medications Were Combined Into One $455-Million Specialty Pill?

Vimovo costs way more than the two individual medicines. So how have its manufacturers managed to make it sell?

Everything happened so fast as I walked out of the doctor’s exam room. I was tucking in my shirt and wondering if I’d asked all my questions about my injured shoulder when one of the doctor’s assistants handed me two small boxes of pills.

Mother of all land scams has blown in the face of KCR government in Telangana

The illegal deal is reported to have caused a loss of Rs 587 crore to the state exchequer.

Just a week after K Chandrasekhar Rao claimed no government land in Telangana had passed on to private hands, the chief minister is on the back foot. It has now come to light that Telangana Rashtra Samiti senior leader and Rajya Sabha MP Kesava Rao's family purchased 50 acres of land in Hafeezpur village in Ibrahimpatnam mandal near Hyderabad.

The Harsh Reasons These Housewives In Bangalore Chose To Become Sex Workers

Editor’s note: For decades, sex workers in India have been pushed to the margins, forced to deal with shame and stigma from society. ‘Unheard Stories’ is a series of stories by INNLIVE that aims to bring these narratives to the fore, to build a more inclusive and accepting society.

“I am illiterate and unskilled. I need money to run my household. Now, this (sex work) is my job and I am proud of it as I have sacrificed a lot for my family,” says Jaya Prabha (name changed) with a stoic face. For her, sex work is a lesser evil than watching her children starve.

Ransomware Attacks Can Seriously Cripple Systems Like Aadhaar

WannaCry, the cyber attack that recently crippled Britain's National Health Service, and jammed hundred and thousands of computers in Spain, Russia, Ukraine, Taiwan and several other countries, should be a wake-up call for all of us—individuals, organisations and governments—who tend to take cyber security lightly.

What's WannaCry all about? It's what's known as ransomware—a particularly nasty type of malware that blocks access to a computer or its data and demands money to release it. The malicious software is planted on the network and temporarily stalls users from accessing their systems till a specified amount of "ransom" is paid electronically. Usually, the ransom demand is in the form of crypto currencies such as Bitcoin whose transaction trail is virtually untraceable. Once the ransom is paid, the files and data are decrypted by the hacker. In most cases, the lockdown is done through Trojans which are planted into the network system as simple phishing or spam emails.

India’s Diabetes Epidemic Is Making A Worrying Demographic Shift

More than 10% of urban Indians have diabetes, at least half of Indians who have it don't know it, and the prevalence of the disease is increasingly shifting to poorer people, the largest nationally study of the disease in India has found.

The Indian Council of Medical Research-India Diabetes (ICMR-INDIAB) study is the largest nationally representative study of diabetes in India and includes data from 57,000 people across 15 states; glucose tolerance tests were performed on participants to diagnose diabetes and pre-diabetes. The study was published in the medical journal Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology late on Wednesday night.

This Ramzan, Muslims In UP Will Break Their Roza With A Glass Of Cow's Milk From RSS

The RSS's Muslim wing will organise iftars on Fridays in Uttar Pradesh this Ramzan and serve only cow milk and its products to drive home the message of 'save the cow' and that consumption of its meat invites diseases.

Mahiraj Dhwaj Singh, national co-convenor (organisation) of Muslim Rashtriya Manch (MRM) for Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, said it is for the "first time" that people who observe roza (fast), will be ending it with a glass of cow's milk.

Will universal maternity entitlements in India remain a pipe dream?

Existing minimal entitlements to women are now being undermined further through the half-hearted Maternity Benefit Programme.

Maternity entitlements have been in the news several times over the last year. In August 2016, the Maternity Benefit Act was amended to extend the period of paid maternity leave from 12 weeks to 26 weeks. Later, in his New Year’s eve address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the expansion of a maternity benefit scheme to all districts. Last week, the Cabinet approved a Maternity Benefit Programme that does cover all districts across the country but dilutes the entitlements to each beneficiary and imposes conditions that will exclude many women.

Where Are India's Heat Hotspots?

Heat waves across the world have killed tens of thousands of people since the turn of the century. In the U.S., more people die from deaths related to heat than all other natural phenomena combined. Parts of West Asia are expected to become inhospitable to human life by the end of this century. 

And in recent years, India and neighboring regions have experienced several devastating heat waves, causing the country to increasingly focus on a growing global concern—rising temperatures as a public health threat.

By 2022 India’s population is projected to exceed China’s, making it home to one-fifth of the world’s population. As a developing country located in the tropics, India suffers from factors that make it vulnerable to heat waves: persistent poverty, poor sanitation, a precarious water and electricity supply and low rate of access to health care.

Will Superstar Rajinikanth finally enter politics?

His failure to live up to the expectations he often builds up has made such speculation a sort of amusement.

“Naa eppo varuven eppadi varuven nu yarukum theriyathu
aana varavendiya tithula correct ah varuven”
(No one knows when and how I will enter. But I will enter at the right time)

This was Rajinikanth’s legendary punchline in the 1995 blockbuster Muthu.

Fitness and fasting: Making exercise during Ramadan work for you

It’s a dilemma faced by many Muslims every year. INNLIVE breaks down how you can both fast and exercise.

Going to the gym on an empty stomach, without any water and slightly sleep-deprived during the long summer days of July may seem a little loony. Yet all across the world, many Muslims choose to do this. On the first day of Ramadan, my friend and I went to the gym, naively thinking we’d be the only Muslims there. How wrong we were.

Human Interest Story: Six Best Global Festivals That Will Blow Your Mind

There’s something about festivals, be it a giant, joyous party or a respectful honouring of tradition; a seemingly bizarre adherence to ritual or a celebration of a quirky obsession – it’s a uniquely human thing to be involved in.

We like to get together to dance, sing, eat, laugh, drink, dress up, light fires, take our clothes off, throw tomatoes at each other, roll around in mud – just about anything really, but we seem to like doing it in really large groups with bags of enthusiasm. This selection from 50 Festivals to Blow Your Mind should give party-loving travellers plenty of ideas for their next trip.

Jasmine to chocolate: In sex-shy India, flavoured condoms are way more popular than regular rubbers

A sex worker blows a condom for decorating a tram during an AIDS awareness campaign in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata December 1, 2007. India has the world's third biggest caseload of people living with the deadly virus. After originally estimating some 5.7 million were infected in India, the U.N. reduced that estimate to 2.5 million.

In a country where talking about sex remains a taboo, and the act of buying contraception is often shrouded in secrecy, flavoured condoms are having a moment.

Violence in hospitals: Three steps towards mending doctor-patient relationships

Delhi’s mohalla clinics and Mumbai’s Swasth clinics have the right idea – make primary healthcare better.

Even after repeated protests, mass leaves and assurances from authorities of better security, incidents of violence against doctors continue unabated. Last week, a man whose critically ill father died at Sion Hospital manhandled a resident doctor, even though several security personnel had been deployed at the hospital since April.

Unpaid and shunned, ragpickers are critical for waste management in India

They help clean up a significant proportion of the 62 million tonnes of waste generated annually.

The Ajmer Shatabdi pulls into the New Delhi station every night at around 11 pm. During the six-hour journey from Ajmer, the train serves tea, snacks, soup, dinner and dessert – more food than an average person can eat in that time.

Neuroscientists say having a baby shrinks mothers’ brains

Women who are pregnant often report feeling a little fuzzy, a little dim and more forgetful than usual, but medical research has produced mixed data to support the so-called “baby brain” phenomenon. Now a study that used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) confirms that mothers lose brain volume when they’re pregnant, adding to the debate.

The authors of the new study, which was published in Nature Neuroscience, suspect the reductions they’ve detected may be a side-effect of “synaptic pruning,” which also happens to humans at age three and again during adolescence.

Indian IT Workers Brace For Bloodbath As Industry Veers Towards Jobless Growth

It seems like the heydays of tech jobs in India may be getting over sooner than what many will have you believe.

Nearly all large IT employers in India such as Infosys, Wipro, Tech Mahindra and Cognizant, are in the process of laying off hundreds of employees, according to media reports. And several more have plans to retrench as many as 58,000 engineers , or over four per cent of their combined workforce in the next few months, Mint reported.

Bras with metal hooks, dark pants banned? CBSE dress code for medical test aspirants is ambiguous

It bans metallic objects. But does that justify making an exam-taker take off her bra because it has a metal hook?

“Is it possible for me to hide an electronic device on the tiny metal hook of my underwear. Should women invigilators be aware of this?” This was the question raised by a girl who was forced to take off her bra before appearing for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test – a highly competitive examination for admission to medical and dental colleges for the undergraduate MBBS and BDS courses – in Kerala’s Kannur district, recently.

An Indian politician gifts brides laundry bats to tackle abusive husbands

This minister’s message to Indian women is simple: “If your alcoholic husband is physically abusive, thrash him.”

When one suffering woman asked Madhya Pradesh minister Gopal Bhargava if it was all right to beat up her abusive spouse with a mogri, the wooden bat traditionally used to wash clothes, he took the idea seriously. After all, Bhargava had been receiving numerous such complaints.