Nine gram sewaks have committed suicide in past one year due to work stress Gram sewaks in Maharashtra have refused to give in to the high-handedness of the administration for the implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) so that it can be projected as a success. Instead, they have decided to approach the high court to press for their demands like formation of a separate independent agency for the...

Questionable drug trials on mentally challenged persons by doctors in Indore emphasise the need for strict enforcement of medical ethics. IN what appears to be a page out of Robin Cook's medical thriller, government and private doctors in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, reportedly carried out clinical trials of various medicines on some 233 patients who had gone to them seeking psychiatric treatment. As in Cook's famous book Coma, in which a medical...

A study questions the efficacy of conditional cash transfer schemes in promoting the girl child. IN an attempt to address some of the serious imbalances in society, specifically the gender imbalance, the Central and State governments have embarked on several short-term conditional cash transfer (CCT) schemes in the past decade and a half. While the Central government is convinced about the efficacy of the schemes aimed at arresting the distorted sex...

A day after the introduction of the anti-graft Lokpal and Lokayukta Bill, 2011, in the Lok Sabha, sources in the Central Bureau of Investigation on Friday felt that the agency's autonomy of investigation had been “seriously compromised”. CBI sources said the Bill did not seem to confer greater autonomy to the investigative agency—one of the focal points of the civil society's agitation for bringing about a strong, effective and credible Lokpal...

From the beginning of the proceedings today, speakers from Team Anna appeared to be pressing home one point above all: they had returned to Jantar Mantar with an agenda larger than the (Jan) Lokpal. The Bill must be passed this winter session, or else there would be a “jail bharo aandolan”, said Anna. “Not a single jail will remain empty,” he promised. But the larger goal was another law, or...