-The Hindustan Times   To get a driver's licence, what you have to counter is nothing short of a licence raj. Your mammoth effort will not be enough to get you the licence to drive on Delhi's roads. However, like in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, help is always given to those who ask for it. At transport department offices, this help comes in the form of touts.  Though the Delhi government had...

-The Times of India   The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed that the government had reasons to doubt its verdict laying down auction as the only way of allocating natural resources, in what is seen as an indication of a significant judicial rethink.  "On cancellation of spectrum licences allotted without following a transparent system, there is no doubt about its correctness. But if one reads the judgment to mean that auction must be...

-The Telegraph Shillong: Meghalaya police, along with the South Garo Hills district administration, have mounted rescue operations to try and save 15 labourers trapped inside a coal mine close to Nangalbibra since last week. According to information received from South Garo Hills, 15 labourers are still trapped inside the mine at Nengkol in the Rongsa Awe area of Nangalbibra region since Friday afternoon. The chances of their survival appear grim. Baghmara, the district...

Census 2011 data bring into the open Maharashtra’s terrible record in sex-selective abortions. In early June, Vijaymala Patekar, a mother of four girls, haemorrhaged to death at a hospital in Parli, Beed district, Maharashtra. She was reportedly in her second trimester of pregnancy. Her family had allegedly forced her to abort the foetus when they learnt it was a girl child. Sudam Munde, the doctor who performed the procedure, fled Parli but...

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...