-The Indian Express Low crime rate numbers often don’t mean Citizens are safer, and ‘rape capital’ and ‘crime capital’ could both be unfair assessments. In reports such as the one published by the National Crime Records Bureau last week, the quality of data is important, as is its placement in the right context. New Delhi: “It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts...

-The Times of India If what the central government spends on providing healthcare for its own employees is a measure of what decent healthcare costs, what governments (central and states put together) spend for the ordinary citizen is a paltry sixth of that amount. The recently released National Health Accounts (NHA) 2014-15 shows that the average government spend per citizen per year was just Rs 1,108, against almost Rs 6,300 per...

-The Hindu Senior Citizens seek exception from registering biometrics in banks Chennai: Many senior Citizens visiting banks for providing life certificate for pension and linking their Aadhaar numbers with bank accounts have been put to a lot of hardship. They complained that there was no common rule for banks and each of them was following whatever pattern their head offices had decided. Pensioners Herbert Clay, 69, and his wife Annie Clay, 63, had...

-Down to Earth The local administration in Jharkhand is undermining the decentralised scheme, created to enhance livelihood, manage natural resources and improve basic infrastructure in rural areas Yojna Banao Abhiyan (YBA) was an outcome of two government programmes – Mission Antodaya (Intensive Participatory Planning Exercise (IPPE-II)) of the Ministry of Rural Development, and Gram Panchayat Development Planning of the Ministry of Panchayati Raj. It gave an opportunity to newly elected gram panchayats...

-The Hindu If we oppose every solution to the problem of air pollution, how will we ever breathe clean air, asks the environmentalist Environmentalist Sunita Narain has been fighting for clean air for decades. The Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, with which she has been associated and now serves as director general, led the shift to compressed natural gas in Delhi, to reduce air pollution. Ms. Narain is on the statutory...