-Outlook A parliamentary panel, probing road safety issues in the aftermath of the Delhi gangrape case, has expressed serious concern over cases of a large number of buses and autorickshaws in Delhi being registered under fake addresses. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, headed by CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury, felt that criminals got away easily taking advantage of the duality and multiplicity of the policing and security system in the national capital. It...

-Frontine The finalised chapter on health in the 12th Plan document envisages a large role for the private sector in health care. A chapter on health prepared for the draft 12th Five Year Plan Document in July received a lot of criticism for its limited understanding of universal health care and its diluted commitment to increase public expenditure on health. If the revised version is any indication, there has not been...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: Around 25,000 tribal students have been roped in to welcome Congress presidentSonia Gandhi, who will launch a rural health project for children in Palghar on February 6. But parents of students from 13 villages in the taluka have decided to boycott the function and keep their children away to protest against the lack of basic amenities like roads in their localities. Sonia will launch a National Rural...

-PTI Reflecting the dwindling standard of education across schools in rural India, a report has claimed that students required additional help of tuitions to achieve better learning outcomes. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), based on a survey covering about six lakh children in 567 districts of rural India, has said tuition-going students were much more clear with their arithmetic concepts. "The influence of additional inputs in the form of tuition on...

-The Indian Express The national water framework law proposed by the Union government could not be more timely. Even as the onerous task of persuading state governments to accept the idea remains unfinished, the proposed framework, as an overarching statement of general principles that lays down the broad contours within which the Centre, the states and the local bodies can exercise their respective powers on exploiting water, is a comprehensive step...