Within weeks of getting bail from the Supreme Court in connection with charges of sedition, human rights activist Binayak Sen has been made member of the Planning Commission's Steering Committee on Health, which will advise the panel on the Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2012-2017). Binayak Sen, who was released on bail from the Raipur jail last month, will, based on his experience of having worked as a paediatrician in Chhattisgarh's tribal belt,...

An urban Indian spending a penny more than Rs 578 a month – roughly Rs 20 a day – on all his basic needs cannot be termed poor and would not receive social benefits and subsidies given by the Centre to BPL citizens, the Planning Commission has said. The commission told the Supreme Court on Tuesday that a city dweller cannot be termed poor if his average monthly spends exceed Rs...

For smooth implementation of the ‘cancer cervix vaccination programme' in Khammam district; Panel report pointed to casual approach, says Brinda 23,000 girls in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat were vaccinated ‘Ambivalent sentences in the consent form amount to indirect coercion' The Andhra Pradesh government had issued an order for the smooth implementation of the ‘cancer cervix vaccination programme' in Khammam district. It had ordered all educational institutions to support the efforts of the Health...

He killed himself in his college library, unable to bear the insults and taunts. The suicide note recovered from his coat pocket charged his Head of the Department (HOD) with deliberately failing him and threatening to fail him over and over. Seven months later, a three-member group of senior professors re-evaluated his answer sheet and found that he had in fact passed the test. Medical student Jaspreet Singh, a Dalit by...

Haryana records the lowest adult sex ratio in the country, and its Jhajjar district has the worst adult and child sex ratios. THE results of the provisional Census revealed that Haryana as a whole registered the lowest adult sex ratio in the country and also had the lowest child sex ratio (CSR). Among the State's districts, Jhajjar recorded the lowest adult as well as child sex ratio, and within the district,...