-PTI Even as floods play havoc in Uttarakhand, several states have opposed the provisions of a 38-year-old Model Flood Bill aimed at minimising losses to life and property in the natural calamity. The Bill, prepared by the Central Water Commission in 1975, will empower authorities to remove dwellings from flood-prone areas. States such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have opposed the draft Bill, saying rehabilitation of people who will be displaced...
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Mobile clinics conduct sex test on fetuses -Seethalakshmi S
-The Times of India BANGALORE: The pre-natal sex-determination racket has gone mobile in Karnataka. A three-member team from the National Inspection and Monitoring Committee was in for a shock last week after it caught a radiologist red-handed with his mobile ultrasound machine at a bus-stop in Doddaballapur, 43km from Bangalore. The modus operandi was simple: The radiologist would come twice a week to the bus-stop where his agents would turn up with...
More »New mental health bill bans electric shocks without anaesthesia, gives right to treatment
-IANS The right of mentally-ill patients to decide their mode of treatment, decriminalising suicide for them and a ban on electric shock treatment without anaesthesia are some of the progressive provisions of the new mental health bill proposed by the government. "The bill was passed by the union cabinet last week," Health Secretary K. Desiraju told IANS. Once passed by parliament, the bill will repeal the Mental Health Act, 1987. If passed, it will...
More »Mental illness, a secret often hidden away in urban families -Johnson TA
-The Indian Express Last October, authorities in the north Karnataka city of Davangere rescued a 37-year-old man whose family had walled him into a room, with only a tiny window for ventilation, for 10 years after he had begun showing signs of schizophrenia. This month, authorities in Bangalore rescued a 35-year-old woman whose parents are said to have confined her at home for over five years after she showed signs of possible...
More »Food security: How the states feed India
-The Indian Express Trendsetters & tweakers Act one Chhattisgarh already has a food security law in place. It became last December the first state to pass a food security bill, which covers several sections not under existing schemes. The Act makes food entitlement a right and depriving anyone of that an offence. If PDS grains, for instance, are being diverted, the officials involved will face penal provisions. The Act also seeks to empower women...
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