-Pratirodh Bureau With the mercury plummeting, thousands of homeless people continue to bear the harsh winter in the absence of sufficient night shelters in Jaipur city.   A survey released by the People's Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), which voluntarily monitors the condition of night shelters, claims that 40% of these shelters have improper bedding facility. Also, many poor are still spending night in the open due to sufficient shelters.   Here is the survey...

-Pratirodh.com If Year 2012 earned the sobriquet of “Year of Scams’ due to serial expose of “super social cop” Arvind Kejeriwal, and the year-end tragic death of girl in Delhi gang rape case reminded us about the most ugly manifestation of ‘Republic of Patriarchy’ in India, Year 2013 promises to be a game changer for the fortunes of welfare state in India as well as political fortunes of UPA-2.   If Narendra Modi,...

-The Business Standard Reetika Khera Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi* “Aadhaar is being made de facto compulsory for welfare schemes. With two-thirds without Aadhaar, they are bound to be denied entitlements” There are three components of the government’s direct benefit transfer scheme — computerisation, extending banking services and linking the benefits with Aadhaar. The real game-changers are the first two, whereas Aadhaar-enabled transfers carry the risk of excluding current beneficiaries. The Central government has...

-Outlook Jammu:  For the second time in a row, Jammu and Kashmir has emerged as the number one state this year for providing better primary health care service, achieving 43 per cent infant mortality lower than the national average of 47 per cent. "The rate of infant mortality in Jammu and Kashmir has come down to 43 per cent which is better than the national average of 47 per cent," an official...

-The Washington Post The case of a 23-year-old medical student who died Saturday after a brutal gang rape on a bus in New Delhi has seemed to snap India to attention about its endemic sexual violence problem. Hundreds of Indians poured into the streets of New Delhi to mourn the young woman, and police announced that the six men arrested in connection with the attack had been charged with murder. In recent...