Regulations covering public health should override personal rights and the country cannot wait any more for a good public health law. The health care industry, including institutions of medical education, hospitals and pharmaceutical businesses, have grown into behemoths that can do considerable harm in the absence of independent and effective regulatory systems. While there are no success stories in the regulation of any kind of industry in India, I will focus...

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India , Jun 28 2012 (IPS) - Nurses in India are up in arms against the deterioration of the nursing profession in the country, including unfair wages and the policies of private hospital managements. Many exploited female nurses are leaving the country in droves, migrating to countries that offer better employment prospects and working conditions. Those that remain are taking to the streets, demanding decent pay and the enforcement of labour...

Four-year-old Shubham Pal did not shed a tear on his first day to school. He was too busy admiring the surroundings, examining other children wearing the same uniform and polished shoes and carrying attractive water bottles. His maternal uncle, however, had misty eyes. “I never imagined that my nephew would study in an English-medium school,” he told DNA. Shubham secured admission in Vidya Bhavan school, Goregaon, under the 25% quota for the...

-The Telegraph This is one ascent to the top Bengal could have done without. The National Crime Records Bureau has put the state at the top of the list of crimes against women. According to the bureau’s latest report — for 2011 — Bengal accounted for nearly 12.7 per cent of the total number of crimes against women registered in India. Of them, 2,363 were cases of rape. The report has come at a...

-Down to Earth As corruption hijacks procurement centres in Bundelkhand, farmers prefer suicide to a debt trap. Richard Mahapatra reports from Uttar Pradesh with photographer Sayantoni Palchoudhuri A fatal paradox strikes Bundelkhand in the face—an overflowing wheat stock yet an overwhelming number of farmer suicides. Farmers here dread the government wheat procurement centre and the post-mortem house. In Orai, a small town in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, the two are...