India recorded an estimated 15.6 lakh new cancer cases and 8.74 lakh cancer deaths in 2024, according to estimates based on data from 43 cancer registries. Cancer is now the second leading cause of death globally after cardiovascular diseases, with the World Health Organization estimating 20.6 million new cases and nearly 10 million deaths worldwide in 2024. Against this growing burden, cancer stem cells are emerging as a critical target in understanding why tumours return and resist treatment.

The growing cancer burden has made early detection, effective treatment and preventing recurrence critical challenges. While advances in surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, targeted therapies and immunotherapy have improved treatment options, cancer can still return after an apparently successful treatment. One reason may lie in a small population of cancer stem cells that can remain hidden inside a tumour.

These are known as cancer stem cells. Although they make up only a small fraction of a tumour, researchers believe they can play an important role in tumour recurrence, metastasis and treatment resistance. Their rarity and ability to change their identity have also made them difficult to detect. This is where a new Indian research effort could offer a different way of looking at cancer.

Researchers from the S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology, in collaboration with Ashoka University, have developed an artificial intelligence framework that can identify hidden cancer stem-like cell populations from tumour gene-expression data.

Called ACSCeND, or AI-based Cancer Stem Cells Profiler and Neoplasm Deconvoluter, the framework could help researchers examine cancer biology at a level that conventional tumour analysis may miss.

Cancer Stem Cells: Understanding Single Stemness Score

Cancer is not a uniform mass of identical cells. Different cells within the same tumour can behave differently, with some populations potentially more capable of surviving treatment and driving tumour growth.

Conventional computational approaches often assign a tumour a single “stemness” score. ACSCeND instead identifies three distinct developmental states of cancer stem-like cells: pluripotent-like, multipotent-like and unipotent-like.

The distinction could give researchers a more detailed picture of the biological composition of a tumour.

The framework combines information learned from high-resolution single-cell sequencing with deep learning to analyse conventional bulk tumour RNA sequencing. This is significant because single-cell experiments are not available for every tumour sample, while large collections of conventional RNA sequencing data already exist.

In effect, the researchers are using AI to extract information about hidden cell populations from data that may otherwise appear less detailed.

Tested Across More Than 25,000 Tumours

The researchers validated ACSCeND against existing computational methods and tested it across independent datasets and sequencing platforms. They then applied the framework to more than 25,000 tumour samples from major international cancer databases, including TCGA and PRECOG.

The analysis revealed a significant association between the presence of highly potent, pluripotent-like cancer stem cells and poorer outcomes. Tumours enriched with these cancer stem cells were associated with poorer patient survival, a greater likelihood of recurrence and reduced response to modern immunotherapies.

The framework also identified molecular programmes that may help these cells survive, adapt and evade the immune system. Such findings could provide researchers with potential targets for future drug development and help identify patients who may be more likely to relapse.

Why This Could Matter for Precision Medicine

The significance of the research lies not in AI replacing cancer doctors or predicting an individual patient’s future, but in its ability to reveal biological patterns that are difficult to detect using conventional analysis.

If researchers can better identify the cell populations that are associated with recurrence and treatment resistance, they may gain a clearer understanding of why some tumours return after apparently successful treatment. That knowledge could eventually contribute to therapies designed to target not only the bulk of a tumour but also the populations of cells that help it survive.

The approach could also be valuable because it works with conventional bulk RNA sequencing data. Instead of requiring every tumour sample to undergo expensive and highly detailed single-cell analysis, researchers may be able to investigate hidden cancer stem-like populations across much larger collections of existing samples.

For India, where an estimated 15.6 lakh people were diagnosed with cancer in 2024, such computational approaches could strengthen cancer research and the country’s move towards more data-driven precision medicine.

But the findings need to be viewed in context. ACSCeND is currently a research framework, not a clinical diagnostic tool that can determine whether an individual patient’s cancer will return. The study establishes associations between cancer stem cells states and outcomes; translating those findings into clinical decisions will require further research and validation.

The potential turning point, therefore, is not that AI has solved cancer recurrence. It is that researchers now have another way to look for the cancer stem cells that may be helping tumours survive treatment.

In the long battle against cancer, understanding what remains after treatment may be just as important as understanding what the treatment destroys.

Kerala’s flood emergency is creating another public-health challenge alongside displacement, injuries and infrastructure damage. As people wade through floodwater, clean homes, move through stagnant water or gather in relief shelters, they face exposure to infectious diseases ranging from leptospirosis and dengue to diarrhoeal and respiratory infections.

The risks are emerging as Kerala already carries a substantial communicable-disease burden.

Kerala is India’s Leptospirosis Hotspot

India recorded 8,121 confirmed leptospirosis cases between January and June 2026, according to data tabled in the Rajya Sabha by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. More than half, 4,340 cases, or 53.4% — came from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

Kerala recorded the highest number at 1,726 cases, followed by Tamil Nadu with 1,473 and Karnataka with 624. Assam reported 786 cases and Maharashtra 780.

The figures place Kerala at the top of the national list even before the current flood emergency. That is significant because leptospirosis is strongly associated with exposure to contaminated water and soil — conditions that become more common during floods and the recovery period.

Floods Create Multiple Disease Pathways

Flooding does not produce one uniform disease pattern. Different infections emerge through different pathways and at different times. A 2026 systematic review in BMC Infectious Diseases, covering 71 studies published between 2014 and 2024, found consistent links between flooding and waterborne infections including leptospirosis, cholera, bacillary dysentery and hepatitis A/E. It also identified increased risks of vector-borne diseases such as dengue and malaria. Disease emergence varied from days to weeks depending on the pathogen and flood conditions.

The evidence is particularly strong for diarrhoeal disease. A meta-analysis of 42 studies found that floods were associated with a 40% higher risk of infectious diarrhoea, with the risk of bacterial diarrhoea increasing by 82%. For Kerala, this matters because diarrhoea was already one of the state’s most frequently reported communicable diseases.

During the first eight days of July 2026, government hospitals reported 19,428 diarrhoeal cases, alongside 84,658 fever cases. The same period recorded 834 dengue cases, 661 influenza cases, 113 leptospirosis cases, 197 jaundice cases, 56 malaria cases and 34 Shigella cases. Thirty people died from communicable diseases during those eight days.

Kerala’s Floods Offer a Warning

Kerala’s own experience shows why disease surveillance must continue after the rain stops. A study comparing leptospirosis in Kerala during 2017, 2018 and 2019 found higher case numbers in the flood years, with the strongest increase following the severe 2018 floods. Importantly, cases were highest during the post-flood period, indicating a time lag between flooding and disease emergence.

2018 floods identified 61 leptospirosis hotspots, compared with 34 in 2017 and 21 in 2019. Several hotspots overlapped with high flood-risk areas, while others were in places with limited access to hospitals. The finding points to a larger preparedness opportunity: flood-risk mapping could be combined with disease-risk mapping to identify communities that need early warnings and preventive interventions.

Why Leptospirosis is a Particular Concern

Leptospirosis is caused by Leptospira bacteria and is commonly transmitted through contact with water or soil contaminated by infected animal urine, particularly from rodents. Floods increase this exposure as people walk through contaminated water, clean flooded homes or handle mud and debris. The risk can continue after water recedes, when residents return to clean houses and remove waste.

Kerala has developed specific responses for this risk. The state’s health system uses doxycycline prophylaxis for selected high-risk exposures and has previously established dedicated “Doxy Corners” during disaster responses. It has also expanded early diagnosis: RT-PCR testing for leptospirosis is available through nine government laboratories, according to the Health Department.

The challenge is ensuring these measures reach exposed populations quickly enough.

Dengue and Diarrhoeal Diseases May Follow Different Timelines

Dengue presents a different risk. Heavy rainfall can initially wash away mosquito breeding sites, but as floodwater recedes, stagnant pools can remain in containers, drains and construction sites. These can become breeding sites for Aedes mosquitoes.

Kerala had already recorded 834 dengue cases in the first eight days of July, so vector surveillance will remain important as the flood situation evolves. Diarrhoeal diseases can emerge through another pathway. Flooding can damage sanitation infrastructure, contaminate water and disrupt food hygiene. Kerala’s 19,428 diarrhoeal cases in eight days provide a reminder that this risk exists independently of leptospirosis.

The state’s existing disease burden also includes Shigella. By June 23, Kerala had reported 241 Shigella infections, with outbreaks identified in Kozhikode, Wayanad, Thrissur and Alappuzha.

Influenza Adds Another Layer

Respiratory infections are less directly connected to floodwater but can become harder to control when people are displaced. Relief camps bring people from different households into shared spaces. Crowding and inadequate ventilation can increase opportunities for respiratory transmission.

Kerala recorded 661 influenza cases during the first eight days of July. The concern is about vulnerability. Children, older adults and people with underlying illnesses may be at greater risk when respiratory infections spread in crowded shelters and routine healthcare is disrupted.

The Health Emergency May Peak After the Flood

The most important lesson from Kerala’s previous floods is that the health emergency does not necessarily end when the water recedes. The immediate risks include injuries, drowning and direct exposure to contaminated water. Later, people face contaminated mud and waste while cleaning homes, stagnant water that can support mosquito breeding, disrupted sanitation and increased contact in temporary shelters.

Research shows that different infections can emerge over different time lags. For leptospirosis, Kerala’s experience suggests that the post-flood period can be particularly important. That makes the weeks after flooding a crucial test of public-health preparedness.

Kerala already has daily disease surveillance, district-level monitoring, leptospirosis testing and preventive protocols. The next step is to connect these systems more closely with flood-risk information so that authorities can identify potential disease clusters before hospitals begin seeing a large increase in patients.

India’s agrarian crisis is shrinking farmer incomes while driving up the cost of healthy diets, exposing deep flaws in the country’s food system and nutrition security.

When the figures are carefully unpacked, one thing becomes unmistakable: Indian agriculture is passing through a deep and prolonged crisis. The sector is no longer a reliable source of income, and government support has not reached farmers in the measure needed to restore profitability. The farmer who, a few decades ago, owned his own soil is today gradually turning into a daily-wage labourer. Of a farming family’s total monthly earnings, barely one-third now comes directly from agriculture; the remaining share, nearly two-thirds, has to be made up through government or private jobs, wage labour, or small enterprises. In other words, farming alone is no longer enough to run a household.

How India’s Agrarian Crisis Is Making Nutritious Food Unaffordable

What is more worrying is that, even as the sector remains under pressure, the number of new entrants is rising rather than falling — and most are joining not as landowning farmers but as farm labourers. As landholdings are divided into smaller and smaller fragments, income from farming declines rapidly, forcing families to depend increasingly on non-agricultural sources to survive. This is reflected in suicide statistics too: of the total agricultural suicides recorded in 2023, the latest year for which the National Crime Records Bureau has released data, more than half — at least 56.5 per cent — were of farm labourers. This is not a sudden trend; it has been consistent for years. Of the 10,786 farm-sector suicides recorded that year, 4,690 were landowning farmers or cultivators, while 6,096 were farm labourers — that is, workers who own no land in their name, hold no crop insurance cover, and have no support to fall back on if the season fails. It is precisely this group of daily-wage workers that has today moved to the very centre of the agrarian crisis.

A survey by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) paints a similarly stark picture: over the past five years, nearly 30 per cent of farming families reported crop losses caused by untimely rain, pest and disease attacks, cyclones or drought, and 12 per cent suffered unexpected drops in market prices. Faced with these shocks, families were left with only two options — exhaust their savings or borrow from moneylenders. The reality is so stark that, per NABARD’s All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey (NAFIS) 2021-22, covering the five-year window from 2016-17 to 2021-22, the average farming household is left with a monthly surplus of just ₹1,951 after covering its expenses — and it is precisely out of this gap that the cycle of debt is born.

The average debt on a farming household stood at ₹91,231, marginally higher than the ₹89,074 average for non-farming households. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Food Processing has said the situation demands close monitoring and precisely targeted interventions, so that farmers can sustainably bear the burden of their debt while continuing to invest in agriculture. The committee stated that the department concerned must ensure farmers do not get trapped in an unbearable cycle of debt, and that the schemes designed for them actually deliver benefits on the ground.

And this crisis will not stop here. A powerful super El Niño is taking shape, and weather experts fear it may disrupt the coming monsoon. Farmers already entering the new season in loss, and under the weight of debt, have little capacity left to absorb another shock. In this new era of shifting climate, providing farmers with a coherent, far-sighted policy framework is not a lofty demand — it is the bare minimum.

The Rising Cost of Nutrition

The crisis in the fields echoes directly in urban kitchens, and today the sharpest edge of inflation is falling on the ordinary person’s plate. In India, a nutritious and balanced diet is becoming more expensive every year, moving further out of reach for crores of families. According to the UN’s latest report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026, the per capita cost of a healthy diet in India has risen by more than 48 per cent since 2017. The minimum cost of a daily balanced diet for an average Indian, which stood at $2.77 (PPP) in 2017, reached $4.11 in 2025 — a rise of roughly 34 per cent compared to 2021, when the figure for India stood at $3.07 (PPP). Purchasing power parity (PPP) does not depend on currency exchange rates alone; it also accounts for local prices of goods and services in a given country, and so more truly reflects the burden falling on an ordinary person’s pocket.

The average global per capita cost of a healthy diet has risen from $2.94 (PPP) in 2017 to $4.28 in 2025, an increase of nearly 46 per cent

This rise in prices hits poor and economically weaker families hardest, because the moment prices rise, it is nutrient-rich foods such as fruits, vegetables, milk and eggs that first begin disappearing from their plates. If a healthy diet continues to remain this expensive, the path to a balanced diet will become even harder for families already struggling with malnutrition. According to the definition set by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), a diet can be called healthy only when it simultaneously provides the body with sufficient energy, essential nutrients, variety and balance — mere fullness of the stomach is not the criterion.

The global picture is not very different. The average global per capita cost of a healthy diet has risen from $2.94 (PPP) in 2017 to $4.28 in 2025, an increase of nearly 46 per cent. The situation among India’s South Asian neighbours is even more severe than India’s own. In Bhutan, this cost has reached $6.17, a rise of 49 per cent compared to 2017. In Bangladesh it stands at $4.59 with a 48.5 per cent rise, in Sri Lanka at $5.21 with a 35 per cent rise, in Pakistan at nearly $3.94 with roughly a 33 per cent rise, and in Nepal at $4.19 with a 26 per cent rise. In other words, India’s cost is higher than Pakistan’s but lower than Nepal’s, Bangladesh’s, Sri Lanka’s and Bhutan’s. Yet it must not be forgotten that in a country with as vast a population as India, even a small rise in cost can have a massive impact on the plates of millions upon crores of households.

There is, however, one reassuring point: the number of people worldwide unable to afford a healthy diet has declined from 297 crore (37.4 per cent) in 2021 to 269 crore (32.7 per cent) in 2025. Even so, nearly one in every three people in the world today still cannot afford the cost of nutritious food, and it is the African continent that is scorched worst in this regard, where 66.6 per cent of the population finds a healthy diet beyond reach.

It is also worth understanding exactly where the larger share of the cost goes. The greatest expense falls on fruits, vegetables, milk, eggs, meat and other fresh and animal-based foods, while grains such as rice and wheat remain comparatively cheap. It is precisely during the journey from farm to consumer — through processing, transport, storage, cold chains and wholesale distribution — that the bulk of the cost gets added. As much as 70 to 75 per cent of the total amount a consumer pays for their diet is spent purely within this middle chain. The result is that the farmer does not receive adequate reward for his labour, and the consumer too does not get produce at a fair price — both sides end up at a loss.

Taking the example of poor households in India, staple grains such as rice and wheat are easily available through government schemes or subsidised markets. But the prices of pulses, green vegetables, fruits and milk — the very foods that give the body real strength and immunity — have risen so much that they are slipping beyond the monthly budget of an ordinary family. The outcome is that even as malnutrition and anaemia persist in the country on one hand, the inability to afford nutritious food is growing on the other. This makes one thing entirely clear: merely supplying grain is not enough; the real test lies in delivering nutrient-rich components such as fruits, vegetables, pulses, milk and eggs to every plate at affordable rates. For this, irrigation, cold chains, research, food processing and the supply chain will all need to be strengthened, while also curbing the wastage of food.

The FAO has issued one more warning in its report: that tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and an effective El Niño persisting until the end of 2026 could together place additional strain on global food and fertiliser prices in the period ahead. According to the organisation’s Chief Economist, Máximo Torero Cullen, the real crisis facing the world is not a shortage of food but the rising cost of nutritious diets, and that boosting local production could bring this cost down significantly.

It must be kept in mind that if nutritious food keeps slipping beyond the reach of the ordinary person, the consequences will not remain confined to hunger alone — they will cast their shadow over children’s growth, women’s health, working capacity and the country’s overall economic productivity. This malnutrition will keep hollowing out bodies from within, generation after generation. Therefore, the goal before India can no longer remain limited merely to “food for all”; it must become “nutritious food for all.” Local production, a strengthened supply system and nutrition-centred policies have today become the greatest need of the hour.

The suicide of a farmer in the field and the vanishing nutrition from a child’s plate — these two events may appear separate on the surface, but their roots lie buried in the same systemic failure

Vanishing Diversity on Children’s Plates

It is said that the habits that take root on a child’s plate in early childhood go on to shape the direction of health for an entire lifetime. Yet today, essential components such as fruits, vegetables, pulses and dry fruits are gradually vanishing from the plates of crores of children across the world. This reality has come to light through an extensive study conducted by researchers at Tufts University and published in the journal BMJ Global Health. Analysing data from more than 1,200 dietary surveys conducted across 185 countries between 1990 and 2018, the study assessed the consumption, among children and adolescents from birth to nineteen years of age, of five plant-based food groups: fruits, non-starchy vegetables, starchy vegetables, pulses, and nuts and seeds. According to the researchers, these components are important not only for physical growth but equally for learning ability, mental agility and protection from many diseases later in life, and yet most children are eating far fewer fruits and vegetables than experts recommend.

The suicide of a farmer in the field and the vanishing nutrition from a child’s plate — these two events may appear separate on the surface, but their roots lie buried in the same systemic failure. The farmer does not get a fair return for his sweat, and the consumer does not get the nutrition he needs on his plate, and it is the chain standing between these two ends that keeps reaping the greatest profit. As long as this imbalance within the chain remains uncorrected, this cyclical curse will keep returning every year in a new form — sometimes in the shape of a farmer in the field, and sometimes in the shape of a malnourished child.

(The views and interpretations presented are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of EdPublica.)