-The Hindu Even as the Union government rejected reports of shortage of tuberculosis drugs, saying fresh stocks will arrive by July-end, World Health Organisation (WHO) on Friday asked India to consider changing the regimen from intermittent to daily doses. One of the challenges in anti-TB drugs procurement is that only a few manufacturers produce the particular regimen used by India's programme, which is of intermittent schedule. "WHO currently recommends governments to consider...

-The Hindu There has to be a national mission to ensure that rural homes have access to clean cooking fuel and stoves instead of the killer chulhas that are claiming the lives of large numbers of women A large section of our country's population, nearly 75 per cent of rural and 22 per cent of urban households, still uses biomass for daily cooking. An estimated 80 per cent of the residential energy...

-The Hindu There has been no public debate on the level of watch citizens can be put through, and on what the red lines should be while using intrusive mechanisms The tussle between government agencies' need for a better, faster and real-time interception, surveillance and monitoring mechanism through the Central Monitoring System (CMS), on the one hand, and demands by privacy, civil rights and free speech activists, for ensuring higher privacy for...

-PTI Thousands of people, including poets, athletes, actors, painters and students, took to the city's streets today to voice their protest against rising incidents of crime against women in West Bengal. Starting from College Square in the north, the march, which some quarters claimed was the largest since the new government took over in 2011, ended in downtown Esplanade, a distance of 2.4 km, bringing traffic to a halt. The march,...

-The New Indian Express   There are no easy solutions to some of India's chronic problems, which need to be tackled in a holistic, multi-dimensional manner. However, the United Progressive Alliance government does not think so. It has hit upon the idea of enacting a food security law in the mistaken belief that it will address the problems of poverty and hunger. An article in the pre-eminent medical journal, The Lancet, should...