-The Hindu   Health problems apart, they have little time for family "My father comes home very late. He never attends school-day functions or parent-teacher meetings. There has hardly been a weekend when he took us out..." This is how children of police personnel responded at a family counselling session, organised by the Madurai district police recently. Many children complained that their parents working in the Police department were stressed out most of the...

-The Indian Express Patna: RTI activists in Bihar say they are intimidated and threatened by the people they seek to expose, with five of them murdered since 2009. They have mounted pressure on the government to ensure their safety. Ram Kumar Thakur of Ratnauli, an RTI activist, a lawyer and the main witness in a vigilance case, was shot dead last week, the latest of the five murders. The FIR names Ratnauli...

-The Hindu     The circumstances surrounding the custodial death of a Dalit woman in Tamil Nadu in 2002 serve as a reminder of the difficulties in securing justice when the offenders are government functionaries This is a case of justice being awarded after a decade. Last month, the Ramanathapuram Sessions Court sentenced eight policemen to rigorous imprisonment, for up to 10 years, for the 2002 custodial killing of Karuppi, a poor Dalit woman,...

-The Times of India The government has provided a back-door entry for contractors and the food industry to corner the lucrative ICDS food supply budget through the National Food Security Bill - a move that had seen controversy earlier too but could now become part of the law if passed by Parliament. In a footnote to one of the three schedules of the bill, the government has provided that children between 6...

-The Business Standard We need a food safety model based on societal objectives of nutrition, livelihood and safety My local vegetable vendor sells ordinary lemons packed in plastic bags. It has got me thinking if this is a sign of improving standards of food safety and hygiene. After all, if we go to any supermarket in the rich and food-processed world, we will find food neatly packed so that there is no...