-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...

-Kafila.org Almost a century ago, Katherine Mayo published a book titled ‘Mother India’ that criticized the Indian way of living, and Rudyard Kipling  spoke of the ‘White Man’s Burden’. These writings reflected the colonial perspective that what colonizers did was in the best interest of the colonized people. Consequently, most well-meaning citizens of colonial powers were alienated from the horrible plight of the colonized. Purpose well served – unopposed exploitation. Years later,...

Tuberculosis re-emerges as a major threat as new drug-resistant strains develop because of mismanagement of the disease. At the beginning of the year, doctors at Mumbai’s P.D. Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Centre reported that they had 12 patients infected with TDR-TB, or totally drug-resistant tuberculosis, a condition in which the TB bacilli is resistant to all first- and second-line drugs used in the conventional treatment of the disease. Panic...

-The Telegraph Union food minister K.V. Thomas today claimed the Bengal government had distributed only a small fraction of foodgrain specially allotted last year for 10 backward districts, drawing a sharp rebuttal from the state, as another confrontation with the Centre unfolded over figures. Thomas’s comment came days after Union home minister P. Chidambaram had voiced concern over Bengal’s “Culture of violence” and cited casualty figures that were contested by the Mamata...

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...