Women in rural India continue to die because of indifference and neglect by healthcare authorities... This is a public health warning. Do not express concern for the state of healthcare in this country. Do not express anger that women die because they are either denied care or help is delayed when they have complicated pregnancies. Do not demand that healthcare is an entitlement that the poor have a right to demand...

Heading for further confrontation with Prime Minister’s Office, Sonia Gandhi headed National Advisory Council will soon issue a paper to counter the PM’s Expert Committee’s claim that its proposed National Food Security law cannot be implemented. In its first indication of the confrontation, the NAC on Friday issued a draft of the proposed food security law as per its recommendations to the government in October 2010 to cover 75 % of...

Over 500 people under the banner of All Adivasi Students' Association of Assam (Aasaa) staged a four-hour dharna in the Lastgate area of Dispur on Thursday seeking an immediate halt to illegal eviction in the Lungsung forest area of Kokrajhar district. Shouting slogans like "stop illegal eviction in Lungsung" and "give us justice", the protesters alleged that the Congress-led government in the state has deprived them of the basic needs....

NC Saxena , the influential former bureaucrat who is a member of the National Advisory Council, has raised the ineffectiveness of government programmes among tribal people in a paper that will come up for discussion before the Sonia-Gandhi headed council. The government relied on a report by Saxena last year in denying clearance to a large mining project by Vedanta Resources in Orissa’s Niyamgiri hills . This had attracted international...

Chhattisgarh tribals punished for exercising rights under Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act It was unconstitutional, violation of PESA, says petition It was pushed by local administration, politicians to set up thermal power plant One morning in March 2010, residents of Premnagar awoke to discover they were villagers no more. An administrative notification had dissolved Premnagar's village council or gram panchayat and replaced it with a city council or nagar panchayat. Unbeknownst to...