-The Indian Express     Mumbai: It's been eight months since the state government launched ‘Manodhairya Yojana', a scheme to provide monetary relief and rehabilitation for rape and acid attack victims, including women and children. But with little advocacy, lack of counsellors in civic-run hospitals, poor post-trauma support as mandated by the scheme, and most importantly, policy apathy, ‘Manodhairya' risks being a laudable scheme just on paper. AAMIR KHAN and TABASSUM BARNAGARWALA speak...

-The Times of India   NEW DELHI: When a new HRD minister takes over next week, he will be virtually presiding over a mess left behind by the previous government. In the first few weeks as the debris is cleared, the new minister will discover the two contrasting worlds of school and higher education. Despite the problems and handicap the Right to Education faces, the last five years have seen the historic...

-Down to Earth Most suicides among orchard farmers, say observers As many as 101 farmers have committed suicide in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra since the devastating hailstorms in March this year. This sudden spurt of suicides has raised concerns as to whether this arid region is heading for an agrarian crisis similar to that of Vidarbha. A whopping 71 suicides have been reported in the month of March 2014, close on the...

-The Times of India   NEW DELHI: The law ministry has informed a high-level committee of the Supreme Court that at least 2,300 courtrooms were added in the last three years across the country, enough for augmenting the strength of the judiciary in subordinate courts to bring down pendency of cases. Senior SC judge, Justice H L Dattu, heading the apex court's committee on court management, met senior officials of the law...

-The Times of India   NEW DELHI: Emissions of fine particulate matter or PM2.5 in Delhi have increased by 11.5% over the past four years, according to a GIS-based inventory prepared by Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), an autonomous body under the ministry of earth sciences. The transport sector appears to be the worst culprit as it's the biggest contributor to this jump followed by manufacturing industries and power plants. After...