-Livemint.com After being on the sidelines of Dalit and feminist movements for long, Dalit women are now standing up for their rights New Delhi: In 2008, seven women, aged 19-24, walked into a police station in Haryana’s Indri village in Kurukshetra district. Dressed in salwar-kameez with dupattas draped around their necks, they looked tired but confident, angry and brimming with questions. They wanted to meet the SHO and ask why no FIR...

-The Indian Express There are 121 languages which are spoken by 10,000 or more people in India, which has a population of 121 crore, the report said. New Delhi: More than 19,500 languages or dialects are spoken in India as mother tongues, according to the latest analysis of a census released this week. There are 121 languages which are spoken by 10,000 or more people in India, which has a population of...

-Down to Earth Much of the groundwater in Malwa, Punjab has chemicals exceeding permissible limits, putting children at risk of a blood disorder Groundwater in Malwa region of Punjab is unfit for drinking and irrigation, according to a study published recently in the Arabian Journal of Geosciences, the official journal of the Saudi Society for Geosciences. The study also warns that children in the region are highly vulnerable to methemoglobinemia, a blood...

-Hindustan Times Contractual in nature, the lateral entry of experts should not alarm civil services unions. At the same time, it must be ensured that the policy is not misused for political purposes. The government’s decision to recruit 10 senior bureaucrats through lateral entry is, in principle, a bold and long-overdue step. The Indian state apparatus suffers from three key deficiencies. Contrary to the widespread impression that it is bloated, the government...

-Hindustan Times Revving motors, ceaseless honking, blaring music are taking a toll on those who live or work around busy roads. New Delhi: Dust mixed with toxic fumes from vehicular exhausts exacerbate lung and heart diseases and trigger death from heart attack, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung infections like pneumonia, and cancers of the lung and respiratory tract. What is less known is that traffic noise adds to this incessant vehicular assault...