-The Hindustan Times Eighteen tribal girls started practicing in the farms of Ormanjhi near Ranchi and because an American dared they ended up playing football in Spain. Franz Gastler, a US national founded Yuwa, an NGO, in 2009 to use football to promote health, education and a shot at a better life, but his unending efforts got India talking about the U-14 team. They finished two international tournaments - Donostic Cup in...

-Outlook Doctors at public hospitals in Mumbai are getting tuberculosis Samidha Khandare made news just a few months ago when she received her medical degree as she herself lay on a hospital bed. She'd been undergoing treatment for tuberculosis. Tragically, she hit the headlines once again: on June 30, she died of multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). A nursing student too died of TB at the Nair Hospital. Since then, at least...

The UPA government’s proposed bid to amend the Right to Information (RTI) Act, in order to avoid compliance with the June 3 CIC order bringing records of political parties within RTI’s ambit, is sparking widespread citizen criticism and mobilisation. (Pl read the links below for more info on RTI and the bid to amend it)   An online petition put out by the National Campaign for the People’s Right to Information has...

-One World South Asia The mid-day meal tragedy in Bihar has drawn attention directly to the way we articulate and work for educational entitlements, writes Parvinder Singh and Priyanka Sarkar. Lucknow: It takes an informed and empowered community to harvest the fruits of educational entitlements, including non-discriminatory access to midday meals. The promises made in the Right to Education Act can only be wrested as rights when they are owned by the...

-Down to Earth Government claims a huge drop in poverty numbers but critical indicators-health, malnutrition and wages-continue to be grim. So how did the poor fare better? After a long, long time there was good news to splash as media led with the report of a record 21.9 per cent drop in poverty levels. The July 24 newspaper headlines were celebratory as they reported the Planning Commission's findings that poverty rates...