-The Hindu The absence of state accountability is at the core of issues facing tribal communities The Report of the High Level Committee on Socio-Economic, Health and Educational Status of Tribal Communities of India, under the chairmanship of sociologist Virginius Xaxa, was circulated last week. The 431-page report details the situation of tribal communities: Scheduled Tribes, de-notified tribes and particularly vulnerable tribal communities. Taking on board the findings and demands of social...

-Economic and Political Weekly The key to improving the quality of healthcare services in India and reducing costs at the same time can be found by enacting legislation which lays down minimum standards of patient care. In the absence of such standards and the reluctance of health insurance companies to standardise either price or quality, healthcare services continue to be expensive and of doubtful quality. Developing standards of patient care by...

-The Times of India There is good news and bad news on one of the key problems that haunts India - survival of the girl child. Sex ratio at birth, that is, the number of girls born for every 1000 boys born, has inched up from 906 to 909 between 2007 and 2013. This suggests that female feticide, the monstrous practice of killing off the girl baby in the mothers' womb...

-MoneyLife.in If 2014 was the triumph of the BJP which brought it to power with a thumping majority, it was also the year when this new government used its power to strangulate the Right To Information Act (RTI), as much as it could. Here are some of the milestones for RTI in 2014. Please click here to read more. ...

-The Hindustan Times Despite paying as much as double the price, many health-conscious consumers who think they've gone organic really haven't. Information obtained by Crop Care Federation of India (CCFI) under the Right To Information Act proves that farms that claim to be organic regularly use chemical pesticides to protect their crops, yet market and sell their produce under the organic tag. Evidence of this practice came to light after information from...