Health officials were in for a shock when a random haemoglobin level check showed just how anaemic women were in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC). Fifty-five of the 215 Class II and III women employees had haemoglobin levels under 10 gm while seven women had very low haemoglobin levels.

- Poor and excluded communities, especially women, are most vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change, said a minister on Tuesday. Inaugurating a two-day national seminar titled "Women, Science and Technology and Climate Change", Hisila Yami, minister for Physical Planning and Works said that due to poverty and lack of access to adaptive measures against natural disasters, women are highly affected by impacts of climate change.

Tall, strapping and statuesque, Shivalli M. Chouhan, 34, doesn't look fat, but she insists she is. "It's not my self-image. It's what others tell me," smiles the civil servant with the Indian Defence Accounts Service. It's what her teacher had said long back when she was chosen for a television dance show in school. It's what some of her batchmates had whispered when she won those beauty contests in college and university. Resentful of the constant pressure of other people's unending desire for her to be thin she decided to excel in everything else but looks.