-Frontline A study finds that institutional support alone cannot help reduce maternal mortality in India.  THE high rate of maternal mortality in India has been a cause for national concern, especially on account of the focus on reaching the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals by 2015. Although there is a growing realisation that it will be difficult to meet the MDG targets by that deadline, there is a renewed interest in the...

-The Hindu A key breakthrough emerging from a critical multi-stakeholder meeting held here on Tuesday on Internet censorship and legitimate state restrictions during crisis situations was that the government should itself use the Internet and social media to counter hate speech with comfort speech. Hate speech on social media has been blamed for triggering riots in Uttar Pradesh, Assam and Mumbai two weeks ago. The participants, who included DoT Secretary R. Chandrashekhar,...

-The Hindu In an unprecedented move, the government, through the Department of Telecommunications and the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, has agreed to initiate dialogue on Internet censorship with mega Internet companies, social media giants such as Google and Facebook, members of civil society, technical community, media, ISPs and legal experts. The triggers for the discussion, which will be held on Wednesday, are the riots in Assam, Mumbai and Uttar Pradesh,...

-The Times of India In the cleaning of nearly 13 lakh insanitary dry toilets across the country, human beings and animals play an almost equal role, the Supreme Court was told on Monday. In what could deal a severe blow to the sanitation claims of successive governments, petitioner NGO 'Safai Karmachari Andolan' culled out data from the 2011 census report to inform the court that 4.97 lakh dry toilets were "serviced by...

-The Hindu The Planning Commission’s draft 12th Plan for health has attracted much debate and controversy. Critics have been quick to direct their attention at two issues in it — the proposed increase in government health spending from one per cent to 1.58 per cent of GDP, and the “managed care model.” The spending increase was rightly felt to be grossly inadequate to move India towards achieving universal health care. The...