-The Hindu The power of the bicycles to confer economic and social freedom even in the age of the automobile remains undiminished. Bihar is using it to cut the dropout rate for girls. Bicycles and safe roads are a winning combination. While she was on her way to school one morning, Smriti's bicycle brushed against a speeding truck, and she fell to the ground. After a few stitches on her injured elbow,...

-Live Mint ‘Give me any job... but please take me out of this hell', says 57-year-old Saraswati, a manual scavenger New Delhi: Saraswati doesn't remember the last time her bare hands touched the statues of the gods lying on a shaky wooden plank in a corner of her one-room house in Farrukhnagar village of Ghaziabad district. She doesn't remember the last time she prayed or fasted. She says every part of her body...

-Al Jazeera   The reforms promoted by Prime Minister Singh do not go far enough to help food production and the hungry. The debate on the Food Security Act is based on myths on both sides. The government is propagating the myth that it is the largest anti-poverty and anti-hunger programme ever introduced anywhere in the world. The programme is being heralded as Sonia Gandhi's dream project, and billed as a miracle solution...

-FirstPost.com It's a daily scene at the busy Gariahat crossing in Kolkata. Traffic is barreling down in all directions. Minibuses make screeching right turns at breakneck speed. The tramline in the middle of the street has been dug up and is a giant crater occupying half the road, marked by corrugated metal walls and little red flags. Taxis and autos dodge buses to try and squeeze by the construction onto a...

-The Telegraph Bhubaneswar: About 115 students of a government school in Puri district were hospitalised today allegedly after consuming iron tablets that were administered as part of their midday meals. The supplementary tablets are given once every week as part of a government scheme to cure anaemia among the children. The state government has ordered a probe into the incident that took place at Gopinathpur Upper Grade Middle English School in Brahmagiri's Jadupur...