-IANS   A representative of Dalit organisations Saturday sought support for their version of the anti-graft bill, claiming that the Jan Lokpal bill drafted by Team Anna "will disturb the constitutional balance". "The Jan Lokpal bill wants the executive, the judiciary and the legislature should report to the Lokpal. This will disturb the fine constitutional balance," said All India Confederation of SC/ST Organisations chairman Udit Raj, seeking support for their version of...

-The Times of India   The public health department has sought chief minister Prithviraj Chavan's intervention to introduce stringent clauses against medicos who complete their education from state-run or civic hospitals but refuse to serve the mandatory one-year rural stint.  According to an official, the government was considering not issuing medical registration certificates--which is mandatory for higher studies, pursuing job in any hospital or even for starting a dispensary of their own-to students...

-The Business Standard   PDS no prerequisite for grain entitlement to general-category families. The contours of the Food Security Bill are firming up, what with the proposed legislation now stipulating a monthly minimum of seven kilograms of grains per person for the country’s priority households. In fact, this category of families — with a pregnant woman, dependent children or a differently-abled member — will get even higher Quota depending upon the availability, as...

-The Business Standard   Young women in India are much better off than their mothers, but they fare much worse than their counterparts in many developing countries when it comes to the physical survival rate of women and participation in labour force, says a report by the World Bank. The World Development Report titled ‘Gender Equality and Development’ looks at gender inequality as not just a moral but also an economic issue. The report...

Any new system for the socio-economic progress of Dalits and other vulnerable sections must not lose sight of Special Component Plan goals. THE Planning Commission's “Approach to the 12th Five Year Plan” deals with the Scheduled Castes (S.C.s) briefly in a portion of Chapter 11 titled “Social and Regional Equity”. It, however, significantly mentions the need to devise a new system that can overcome the difficulties experienced with regard to the...