-The Telegraph New Delhi: Successive Indian governments have ignored repeated alerts and done little to introduce laws to curb practices that could explain how lead could slip into noodles and other raw and processed food, analysts say. India introduced unleaded petrol in March 2000 but the governments since then have not moved enough to impose mandatory limits for lead in paints which remain a key source of environmental lead pollution in the...

-The Indian Express Child nutrition is being held hostage to spurious, largely upper caste, arguments Child nutrition is prime-time news only when a tragedy occurs. Child undernutrition is no less a tragedy but rarely recognised as such. Attention to it, following the Madhya Pradesh chief minister’s rejection of a proposal to introduce eggs in anganwadis is significant and welcome. Few people realise food intake in India is very poor. According to the 2005-06...

-The Times of India BENGALURU: The prestigious Oxford University last week announced that professor Louise Richardson, subject to approval, could go on to become the university's first woman vice-chancellor in its 800-year history. Down in India, things are not too different. Multiple studies reveal the percentage of women vice-chancellors in India is at a shocking 3%, with just 13 universities of the 431 a UGC study surveyed, having women running a university....

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Same-sex rapes by fellow prisoners trigger most jail suicides, the National Human Rights Commission has said in a report, swivelling the spotlight to the administration of prisons and the plight of inmates. While such abuses were hardly a secret to many, this is the first such official acknowledgement by a rights panel or government organisation. The study was prompted by the suicide of a suspect in the Delhi...

-The Indian Express It can be strengthened —by the collection of taxes at the local level, for instance. Democratic decentralisation, conceived two decades ago, seems to be a lost cause at first sight. Beyond lip service by politicians, neither panchayats nor municipalities have captured the public imagination as viable, responsive, accountable institutions of government. Just after the Karnataka panchayat elections, which ended on June 2, the continued disempowerment of local governments is...