-The Hindu School staff members offended by government circular asking them to avoid wearing indecent clothes A recent circular issued by the school education department, which urges teachers to be dressed in a “decent manner”, has evoked strong responses from teachers, who are offended by what they see as the officiousness of the message. The circular dated June 29, in essence, tells teachers: Please avoid wearing indecent clothes; it is important that you...

ASHAs will continue to bear the burden of the government's rural health mission as a new order lists more incentive-based services. On May 31, a Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare order listed additional incentivised duties for accredited social health activists, or ASHAs, but was silent on the issue of regularisation of their employment. ASHAs, who bridge the gap between the rural population and the nearest health care outlets under...

-The Deccan Herald School children may now get exposure to the basics of the Right to Information Act with the National Council for Educational Research Training (NCERT) examining a suggestion for inclusion of the landmark law in the school curriculum. The suggestion has been made by the Department of Personnel and Training which is a nodal agency for the matters relating to implementation of the RTI Act.“We are discussing it. The basics...

The Bill to regulate medical education and govern human resource in health is a highly diluted version of the original draft. Distortions in the area of Human Resource for Health (HRH) are the root cause of many of the ills facing the health sector in India. Among them is the shortage of qualified medical professionals. The estimated density of 19 health workers (qualified and unqualified) per 10,000 population is nearly 25...

The government and the MCI dither on a proposed course to provide better primary health care in villages. On February 27, the Delhi High Court slapped contempt notices on the Union Health Secretary and the Chairperson of the Medical Council of India (MCI) for their non-compliance with its order of November 10, 2010, to initiate measures to introduce a “Bachelor of Rural Health Care (BRHC)” course of three and a half...